Rebus Puzzles

Reading A Picture As A Phrase

A rebus is a phrase drawn rather than written. The words are all there in front of you — what is hidden is the relationship between them, and that relationship is carried entirely by where each word sits. A word above another means over. A word inside a box means in. A word written twice means it happens twice. Nothing is encoded and nothing is a pun on spelling: you are reading position as grammar.

That is what makes rebus puzzles unusual among the types on this site. Everywhere else the answer is derived — a reflection, a count, a shortest path — and can therefore be generated without limit. A rebus answer is an English phrase, and phrases are settled by usage rather than by rule. "Side by side" and "back to back" are the same arrangement with different joining words, and no amount of logic will tell you which is which. Only usage will.

Where Rebus Puzzles Came From

The idea is far older than the word game. Writing systems that use a picture for a sound rather than for the thing pictured are called rebus writing, and the principle sits underneath Egyptian hieroglyphs and early cuneiform alike — a drawing of a bee plus a leaf gives you "belief" without either bees or leaves being the point.

The name itself comes from Latin rebus, "by things". It reached English through French, where picture-riddles were being printed for entertainment by the seventeenth century, and rebus devices had already been used in heraldry for centuries as visual puns on a family name. In Britain the puzzles are often called dingbats, and in the United States you will also see wordies or word picture puzzles — all the same thing.

A Worked Example, Start To Finish

Take a rebus showing the word STAND with a single letter I drawn underneath it. Most people try to read it left to right, find nothing, and get stuck. Read it as a position instead:

1. Name the words. There are two: stand and I. Say them out loud — the answer is almost always spoken English rather than written.
2. Name the relationship. The I is below the STAND. Below means under.
3. Say it in that order. Which word is the subject? The I. So: I … under … stand.
4. Let the joining word disappear. "I understand." The word under stopped being a preposition and became part of a longer word, which is the trick this arrangement plays.

That fourth step is the one people miss. A joining word can stay separate (mind over matter) or be swallowed into the next word (man overboard), and which happens is not something the drawing tells you. Try both.

Four Habits That Make Rebuses Easier

• Read it aloud. These are puzzles about spoken idiom. A phrase you would never write down often sounds obvious the moment you say it.
• Name the position before the words. "Something is inside something" narrows the answer far faster than staring at the words does.
• Try the words in both orders. A stack can be read downwards or upwards, and only one of the two is a phrase English actually uses.
• Expect the joining word to vanish. Over, under and in all merge into longer words as often as they stay separate.

The Eight Arrangements

Almost every rebus ever set is one of eight arrangements. Learn these and you are reading rather than guessing:

• Above — one word over another reads as over. MIND / MATTER → mind over matter.
• Below — the lower word is the one that is under. STAND with I beneath → I understand.
• Inside — a word drawn in a container reads as in. ONE in a box marked MILLION → one in a million.
• Doubled — a word drawn twice reads as that word, a joining word, then the word again. SIDE SIDE → side by side.
• Backwards — reversed letters add back. GROUND written backwards → background.
• Size — drawn tiny or huge adds small or big. A minute TALK → small talk.
• Broken — a word split in two reads as broken. PROM ISE → broken promise.
• Climbing or falling — the direction word comes first. FALL running downhill → downfall.

How To Read A Rebus

1. Say what you see, not what you think it means. “The word BIRD, drawn inside a box marked HAND.” Describing the picture is most of the work, and skipping it is why people stare at a rebus they could have read in seconds.
2. Turn each position into its word. Inside becomes “in”. Above becomes “over”. Backwards becomes “back”. Now you have a sentence rather than a picture.
3. Say it aloud and run the words together. “Bird in hand” → a bird in the hand. The reading and the phrase are almost never spelled the same, and this last step is the one a rebus always asks for.

Why A Rebus Can Look Like It Has Two Answers

Here is the honest part, and it is the thing worth learning. If MIND sits above MATTER, then mind is over matter — and matter is under mind. Both statements describe the drawing perfectly truthfully. The picture, by itself, does not settle it.

What settles it is that only one of those readings is a phrase English actually uses. That is not a trick or a flaw in the puzzle; it is the second half of the skill, and every explanation here names it rather than pretending the arrangement alone decides. The same goes for joining words: a doubled word tells you the answer is something  something, and nothing but usage tells you whether it is by, to, and, for or after.

The Two Ways A Wrong Answer Is Wrong

Every wrong option on this page is one of exactly two things, and the explanation says which:

• A misreading of this picture — the same drawing decoded by the wrong rule. Read as under instead of over, forwards instead of backwards, big instead of small. These teach the rule.
• A real phrase from a different picture — a genuine answer that would need a drawing this one is not. These teach you to check the picture instead of recognising a phrase and stopping.

Both are computed from the drawing rather than written by hand, which is why the reason can tell you exactly which words would have had to be where.

Rebus Puzzles For Kids

Rebus puzzles are a staple of primary-school wordplay, and they work well with children for a reason: nothing is hidden. The words are in plain sight and fully readable, so a child who can read the words can solve the puzzle — what is being practised is noticing where things are, and saying what you see out loud before guessing.

Three of the families here are the right place to start, and each has its own pattern on the board above:

• Big and small — the word is drawn huge or tiny, and that is the whole clue. Small talk, big deal.
• Broken words — the word is snapped in half. Broken promise.
• Doubled words — the word appears twice. Side by side.

Set the difficulty to easy and those three, plus the simplest stacked rebuses, are what you get. The stacked, backwards and climbing families ask more, and the mixed patterns are for once the eight rules are familiar. Every answer is a real English phrase, so a rebus that lands is also a phrase learned.

A Note On How Many There Are

Most puzzle types on this site generate an unlimited number of questions, because their answers are derived. A rebus is different: its answer is a real English phrase, and phrases cannot be generated. So the rebus inventory is a fixed bank of 72 pictures across the eight rules, and it is stated here rather than implied otherwise. What is generated is everything else — which picture you get, which misreadings become the wrong answers, and the whole worked explanation.

Rebus Puzzles Frequently Asked Questions