REBUSES

Rebuses are puzzles made of little pictures, words or letters, that represent a word, phrase, or famous saying.

HOW TO SOLVE A REBUS?

POSITION

• One of the most common ways is the positioning of the words and symbols. In the example ‘MAN is in MOON’, so it is the word ‘man’ inside the word ‘moon’.

HIGHLIGHTING

• Sometimes attention is drawn to some parts of the picture, often by an arrow or underlining, indicating that this is where we should be looking for the clue. Here the arrow points to the first AID, and thus the answer is FIRST AID.

DIRECTION

• Closely related to position is direction. When a word is spelled in any direction other than the usual left-to-right it is generally relevant to the solution. The example illustrates wake up.

NUMBER

• The device of number is frequently used, due to the closeness in sound of numbers 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, etc. to other English words. This example shows 4 GOT 10 HEROES, and so the answer is forgotten heroes.

COLOUR

• If a word or symbol is not printed in black, then you can expect the colour to be a relevant in the solution. In this easy example CHEESE is blue; so it is blue cheese.

NOW, LET’S PLAY!

REDUCTION

UNDERWORLD

FIRST LADY

MIDDLE-AGED

EXCELLENCY

CROSSROADS

ICE CUBE

LIFE AFTER DEATH

MERRY-GO-ROUND

TWO IN ONE

MAN OVERBOARD

man --------- board

MILLIONAIRE

FORGIVE AND FORGET

GIVE GIVE GIVE GIVE

and GET GET GET GET

GOOD INTENTIONS

I UNDERSTAND

stand ------------ I

STEPFATHER

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

R/E/A/D/I/N/G