A Wacky Wordy is a group of words/letters representing a phrase. An example of a simple Wacky Wordy is:

Lem
Juice

This is 'Lem' on 'Juice', or lemon juice. Here are six Wacky Wordies. What do each represent?

1. Lost Gone Lost Gone Lost Gone (recurring)

2. Cover
Going

3. Hot Hot
TV TV TV TV

4. +......-
+....-
+..-
+-

5. Hheoamret

6.Elephant
Cat
Dog Day
Giraffe
Monkey
Dog Day
Rabbit
Dog Day

If you do a Google search for "Rebus" the top site found contains things like this, even some including no pictures, as here, which I've known as Wacky Wordies as in the title here.  To me, typically, a rebus was like a form of pre-heiroglyphic writing, used in puzzles, where a picture took the place of a syllable or part of a word, and these were strung together.

But on today's Jeopardy TV show, they exemplified a Rebus with a picture of a head, with below it two words HEAL  HEEL. The correct response was "What is a Rebus". Of course the solution to this puzzle is "Head over heels". So apparently current usage refers to this type of thing as a rebus.

Posted by Charlie on 2013-02-18 21:44:08