rebus

The effect of these lines, which reach back into the past while projecting far into the future, is that of a rebus, with the stunning phrase “the final whereabouts” offering one more breath of indirection.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2022

It reminds me of a surrealist painting, or a rebus puzzle.

From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2021

A rebus, a romance, a gothic thriller and a woozy comedy, “The Handmaiden” is finally and most significantly a liberation story.

From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2016

Today the rebus is a convention of the crossword.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 31, 2015

In San Antonio, Texas, the final contest was a fresh and very complicated rebus puzzle.

From "Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics" by Chris Grabenstein

I grew up doing crosswords, riddles and rebuses.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2025

Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images In essence, Griffiths had to crack an elaborate Tudor code of rebuses, ciphers, heraldic motifs and symbolic flowers to discover who the man was.

From The Guardian ● May 19, 2015

More complex rebuses are pictures whose elements, correctly named and put together, make up words or sentences.

From Time Magazine Archive

Pâris strikes the imagination by means of rebuses: an armchair garnished with clincher-nails will give "Clou, vis—Clovis"; and, as the sound of frying makes "ric, ric," whitings in a stove will recall "Chilperic."

From Bouvard and Pécuchet A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life by Gustave Flaubert

Good Francesco has searched through my manuscripts for rebuses and nota­tions, and he and Papini have put together a song that begins: Amore sol la mi fa remirare, la sol mi fa sollecita.

From Voices from the Past by Paul Alexander Bartlett