Menu
100 Printable Rebus Puzzles With Answers
Just Family Fun’s free, printable rebus puzzles with answers are perfect for the creative, the cunning, and the sneaky!
If you haven’t come across these games before, rebuses are “picture and word” puzzles that challenge your brain and require immense creativity to solve. They consist of a combination of pictures, directions, words, letters, and even symbols that represent a common phrase. To solve the puzzle, you must detangle the visual clues!
For example, if a rebus for kids has the word ONCE and a picture of a clock below it, the answer will be ‘Once Upon A Time.’
These popular puzzles have been around for thousands of years, with the first rebus printed on a clay tablet around 5000 years ago! Rebus puzzles are also sometimes called pictogram puzzles, picture riddles or visual puzzles, but the idea is always the same – to stretch your mind by using the visual clues and a variety of wordplays to find the answer.
These visual word puzzles might look difficult at first glance, but children can enjoy solving rebuses of varying difficulty from around the age of 5. So whether you’re the parent of a preschool kid or a teenager, you can find the perfect rebus puzzle for your child. Of course adults can join in the fun too, whether you’re helping a younger family member or just want to relax with a puzzle or two by yourself.
We’ve got a huge selection of free printable rebus puzzles with answers to choose from, including 100 Common Sayings Rebus Puzzles, and themed rebus brain teasers including Music Stars, Guess the Food and Christmas Movies.
Interesting Fact: Did you know that the word Rebus comes from the Latin phrase non verbis, sed rebus – which roughly translates as “not by words, but by things”?
What’s Included In Our Collection Of Rebus Puzzles PDF
Our free rebus puzzles which come in printable PDFs contain pages loaded with numbered rebus puzzles of various levels of difficulty. While some puzzles contain simpler designs with easy-to-identify pictures and symbols, others might require input from older siblings or even Mom and Dad!
But don’t worry. Even if nobody at home can figure out even the trickiest of our rebus puzzles, a complete answer sheet is included in the back of the packet.
If you’re using our printable rebus puzzles in a classroom, you can laminate the sheets to make them more durable.
100 General Rebus Puzzles With Answers
The Benefits of Doing Rebus Puzzles:
While rebus puzzles can be a great source of fun and provide hours of entertainment, they are also a key method of training young brains to think critically and think outside the box. The detective skills they learn from pinpointing clues, combining sources of information, and using their imagination to solve these puzzles can transfer into reading literature, active listening, and even more important subjects at school.
Working to solve the puzzles can also improve cognitive function and in turn short-term memory, concentration, and problem-solving skills. This is because intense moments of brain activity strengthens neural connections!
Similarly, rebus puzzles can boost your child’s vocabulary. As children and adults solve these puzzles, they are exposed to new words and phrases that they may have not encountered before.
Finally, our printable puzzles offer children a comfortable opportunity to think outside the box and use their very own imagination. The more accomplishments they make by solving harder and harder puzzles leads to a greatly improved self-confidence in their skills and abilities.
So throw away their teacher’s boring notes! Have some meaningful and educational fun with our printable PDF of 100 quizzical rebus puzzles for kids.
Tips For Solving Rebus Puzzles:
Count the number of words you see:
It’s unusual to see words repeated over and over again in fiction, magazines, or movies, but that’s what rebus puzzles are all about! Count the number of times you see a word or phrase written, because it likely has something to do with the puzzle’s solution. For example, if the word “square” is written four times, the answer might be four-square, a children’s game played on the playground!Look at the position of symbols next to each other:
You’ll often see words, images, or symbols placed next to each other in peculiar ways in rebus puzzles. Make a note of where things are located! The direction or orientation might come up in the answer, such as the letters “lem” hovering above the letters “ade.” If lem is on ade, then the answer might be lemonade!Try to recognize patterns:
If you see a pattern forming amongst the symbols or words in a rebus puzzle, it might be important for figuring out the meaning behind the clues. Apply the pattern to the entire puzzle so you read the words in the correct order or decode the message in another way!Identify the name of shapes and symbols:
Often times, rebus puzzles make you think more than you need to. If you see a circle on the page, don’t second-guess yourself! See if the word “circle” or “round” fits into your answer anywhere. Similarly, if you see a plus sign, try adding the puzzle’s symbols together like a real math equation. Let the clues guide your thinking.Find the puzzle’s focus:
Most importantly, don’t get bogged down on irrelevant details. If a word is circled, it is likely the primary focus of the rebus puzzle so you can spend your time contemplating how the other figures relate to it. Go into each puzzle with an understanding of what you’re trying to solve.Take breaks:
If you’re anything like us at Just Family Fun, we need to take breaks after using our brains for a long time! Don’t try to solve all one hundred rebus puzzles at once, because you’ll get tired and feel less motivated and creative. Instead, take breaks while you’re playing to let your mind rest up.Check your answers:
Finally, check your answers against the official answer sheet. There’s nothing worse than being confident about an answer only to find out it’s wrong, but that’s how you learn from your mistakes. Make sure you have everything right when you’re done playing.
How To Use Rebus Puzzles:
Anybody can sit down with a rebus puzzle and quietly ponder its mysteries. But that’s no fun! There are dozens of ways to use rebus puzzles in other games and activities. Which one of these is your favorite?
Speedy solving race:
You can play this game with as many puzzlers as you have on hand! Give each player the exact same rebus puzzle turned upside down so they cannot see it. On the count of three, each player will flip their puzzle over and work to figure out the puzzle’s solution in the shortest amount of time. To make this competition even more interesting, provide players with different puzzles to each other, or even multiple puzzles in the same round!Puzzle it out together:
These rebus puzzles in our printable PDF require many different skills to solve, including but not limited to creativity, noticing fine details, and contextualizing. But we can’t be masters at every single skill! So put your expertises together and solve these puzzles as a team. Gather your kids, their friends, your students, or the entire family and work together to notice symbols, piece their meanings together, and find the answer. This is a fun and compassionate team working challenge for groups of any size.Rebus scavenger hunt:
This one is perfect for a big group of kids (or even adults!) who enjoy solving puzzles while being physically active. The objective is to find the rebus puzzles scattered and hidden around a designated area, such as your home, backyard, or nearby park. To start the game, players are given a list of clues that describe the location of each rebus puzzle, such as “look for a rebus puzzle near a tree with three branches”. Be creative! Once a player or their team finds a puzzle, they must solve it correctly to receive the next clue. The game continues until all the puzzles have been found. The player or team that has collected and answered the most puzzles correctly wins the rebus scavenger hunt!Rebus Relay Race:
This race is another mentally and physically intense activity for players of any age. The aim of the game is for each team to solve a rebus puzzle before receiving another from their racing player.Each team will have a given area like the dining room table where they will work on solving puzzles together. The first player in each team, standing across the room, park, or road, will receive a puzzle and run it down to their team of puzzle solvers. The same player will run back and forth, delivering one puzzle to their team at a time until they run out. Meanwhile, the players receiving the puzzles must solve them as quickly as possible to win the game.
Conclusion:
Our free, printable rebus puzzles are an excellent resource for kids to engage in problem-solving activities while still having fun. They are an ideal way to stimulate children’s minds, help improve their cognitive skills, and boost their self confidence and creativity. Whether used in a classroom setting, as a weekend activity, or for an after-school relaxer, rebus puzzles can provide an enjoyable learning experience for kids of any age.
If you love the idea of rebus puzzles or have already had a go with our printables, you may be interested in trying out more of our activities, such as a free dots and boxes game template to make your own fun at home or take your guess at the questions in our ultimate Harry Potter trivia quiz with answers.
Visit Just Family Fun’s main page to try our scavenger hunts, coloring pages, and multitude of other engaging activities and games. Or, feel free to send us a picture of your solved puzzles, rebus relay race, scavenger hunt in the park, and other favorite rebus puzzle activities to share the fun!