Guess by Emoji
Two or three emoji, arranged to encode an idea rather than to spell a title. A lion and a crown. A ship, an iceberg and a broken heart. The good ones are invisible until they are obvious, and then you cannot see how you ever missed them.
You choose a category before the deck is built, and that choice decides both the puzzles and the list you search against: 55 films, 34 songs, 30 television shows or 26 books. Searching 55 films is a materially different game from searching 26 books, which is the point of asking.
Read a title spelled out in emoji.
Play Guess by EmojiHow to read a rebus
The emoji encode the idea, not the words. A puzzle that spelled out the title would be a label rather than a question, so the opening clue is usually one concrete image from the story plus one abstraction: a genre, a setting, a feeling. Work outward from whichever emoji is doing the least literal work, since that is normally the one carrying the meaning.
Watch for emoji used as sounds or as letters. A number in the middle of a line is often a number in the title. A flag is usually a country and occasionally a language. A repeated emoji tends to mean a plural or a sequel.
The other trick is to hold two readings at once. The rebus for a song and the rebus for a film can start identically, which is why the category picker exists — inside a category, the answer space is small enough that a half-formed idea is worth typing into the search box to see what the list offers.
What each rung adds
The first two clue rungs each add another pair of emoji, chosen to introduce something new — a character, an object, a scene — rather than to restate the opener. That is what makes them worth buying: the second clue is not the first clue louder.
The last rung is a written clue, and it is generous by design. Disney, 1994, a stampede you never forget. Bee Gees, 1977, the tempo paramedics teach for chest compressions. By then the round is worth 240 rather than 1000, so the written clue is the point at which you are salvaging rather than competing.
The four categories
Movies is the largest deck at 55 puzzles and the most forgiving, because film iconography is the most standardised: a glowing fingertip, a red pill, a bicycle against the moon.
Songs, at 34, is the hardest of the four, because a song has no plot to draw on — the rebuses lean on the video, the album cover, or a single lyric rendered literally. Shows has 30 and rewards knowing catchphrases. Books has 26 and skews older and more literary, which makes it the one where the written clue earns its keep.
None of this needs a network. The whole game is bundled, so it works with the wifi off.
Scoring
Ten rounds on a four-rung ladder: 1000 points for reading it from the opening emoji, then 620, 380 and 240. A wrong guess costs a rung, which in a game where the answer arrives all at once is worth remembering — if you are not sure, buying the next pair of emoji costs the same as being wrong and tells you something.