Rebus Puzzles
MIND written above MATTER says “mind over matter”. A rebus is a picture riddle made of words: nothing is hidden and nothing is coded, and where the words sit is the whole message. Sixty patterns across eight arrangements, and after every attempt the reading is worked out a step at a time.
Also known as word picture puzzles, picture riddles and dingbats.
A Picture That Speaks A Phrase
A rebus puzzle arranges words, letters and small pictures on a canvas so that the arrangement spells a common phrase. A word above a word means one thing; a word repeated means another; size, position and count all carry meaning. You read the arrangement and name the phrase.
How To Solve Rebus Puzzles
- Describe the arrangement literally before interpreting it.
- Check position: above, below, inside, beside.
- Check count and size: repeated words, oversized letters.
- Say the literal description aloud — the phrase usually rhymes with it.
The literal reading is the path, never the answer. "Man over board" becomes the phrase only after you stop reading and start translating.
| Family | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Stacked words | One word above another. Which one is over which decides the answer, and swapping them is the commonest slip. |
| Words inside | A word drawn inside a container reads as being in it — the family that produces most of the well-known rebuses. |
| Doubled words | A word drawn twice. The rule tells you it is doubled; only English tells you the joining word. |
| Backwards words | A word written in reverse adds “back” — before or after, depending on which lands on a real phrase. |
| Big and small | The size a word is drawn at is part of what it says. |
| Broken words | A word split into pieces reads as broken. The shortest rule in the set and the quickest to spot. |
| Up and down | A word climbing or falling across the frame. The direction word comes first — that is the convention being taught. |
| Mixed rebuses | Every rule served at random, which is how rebuses actually arrive. |
Eight Arrangements, Endless Phrases
Every rebus here is composed from eight arrangement rules over a bank of phrases, so the grammar repeats even when the answer is new. Learn the grammar — position, repetition, size, count — and no arrangement is new.
Rebus Puzzles Frequently Asked Questions
What is a rebus puzzle?
A puzzle where the position of the words carries the meaning. The words themselves are ordinary and fully visible; what you have to read is the arrangement — above, below, inside, doubled, reversed, resized, broken, rising or falling.
Are rebus puzzles good for children?
They work well with children from about seven upwards, because they reward reading carefully and saying things aloud. The sizing, splitting and doubling families are the gentlest starting points here.
What is the difference between a rebus and a dingbat?
None worth worrying about. Dingbat is the common British name for the same puzzle, usually as a quiz round. Word picture puzzle and picture riddle are the other names you will see for it.
Why do the answers here read as lower case?
So that no option can be spotted by its capitals. The words in the picture are drawn in capitals; if the answers were not levelled, the wrong ones built from those words would stand out without being read at all.
Can a rebus have two answers?
A stack can honestly be read both ways: if MIND is above MATTER, then MIND is over MATTER and MATTER is under MIND. Both describe the drawing truthfully. What settles it is which reading lands on a phrase English actually uses. That is the real skill in a rebus, and the explanations here name it every time rather than pretending the picture alone decides.
Why is the same rule sometimes “by” and sometimes “to”?
Because that part is not logic, it is usage. A word drawn twice tells you the answer is that word, something, then the word again — the rule gets you that far and no further. Side by side, back to back, neck and neck and word for word are all the same arrangement with four different joining words, and only knowing the phrase tells you which.
What age are rebus puzzles for?
Any age. The simplest arrangements — a word above another, a word inside another — are readable by children, while the ones that depend on an English idiom suit adults. Nothing here requires specialist knowledge; it requires noticing how the words are placed.
How do you solve a rebus puzzle?
Read the arrangement before you read the words. Ask where each word sits, how big it is, how many times it appears, and which way round it is — position is doing the work that a preposition would do in the written phrase. A word above another suggests over or on; a word inside another suggests in; a word written backwards suggests back or reversed. Then say the description out loud, because these are heard rather than seen.
What does rebus mean?
Rebus comes from the Latin for “by things”. A rebus is a message told in pictures, letters or symbols that stand for words or parts of words, and the plural is rebuses. In a puzzle it means a phrase drawn as words placed so that their position says the rest.
What is a rebus in a crossword?
A single square that holds more than one letter, sometimes a whole word or a symbol. It is a themed trick: the answers through that square only fit once you put several letters in it. It is a different puzzle from the picture rebus on this page, which has no grid to fill in.
What is the rebus principle?
Using a picture for its sound instead of its meaning. Egyptian hieroglyphs and early cuneiform both do this: a drawing of a bee followed by a leaf can spell “belief” without bees or leaves being the point. Rebus puzzles borrow the same habit of reading things as sounds.
What is a picture puzzle called?
A picture puzzle that spells out a phrase is called a rebus. In Britain the same puzzle is usually called a dingbat, especially as a quiz round, and word picture puzzle, picture riddle and wordie all mean the same thing. A picture cut into pieces you reassemble is a jigsaw, and two near-identical pictures to compare is spot the difference — different puzzles that also get called picture puzzles.
What does a rebus with two of the same word, one beneath the other, mean?
That is the doubled rule, not the stacking rule. A word drawn twice means the answer is that word, a joining word, then the word again — side by side, back to back, neck and neck, word for word. Which joining word it takes is usage rather than logic, so the phrase you know is what decides it.