Rebus Puzzles

Today, on the PUZZLE A DAY website,  I was confronted with the following challenge shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Can you solve the two rebus
puzzles that appear below? 

It wasn't clear to me what a rebus puzzle was so I had to look at the answers. It soon became became clear. The top puzzle can be interpreted as "Neither here nor there" and the second as "Pay through the nose". Of course, I'm familiar with this type of puzzle but I wasn't aware that such puzzles went by the name of "rebus". Now I'm the wiser.

I asked ChatGPT the following questions:

What is a rebus puzzle?

A rebus puzzle is a type of word puzzle that uses pictures, symbols, or letters to represent words or parts of words. The puzzle typically presents a series of images, which when deciphered, form a word or phrase. Rebus puzzles are often used in games, brain teasers, and educational settings to challenge people's ability to think creatively and critically.

For example, a rebus puzzle might show a picture of an eye followed by a picture of a heart. The answer to the puzzle would be "I love you," with "eye" representing "I" and "heart" representing "love."

What is origin of the word "rebus" as in "rebus puzzle"?

The word "rebus" comes from the Latin phrase "non verbis sed rebus" which means "not by words but by things." The term was first used to describe a form of representation in which pictures were used to represent words or syllables. In medieval times, rebuses were often used as a form of wordplay in heraldry, where images of animals, objects, and symbols were combined to represent the names or titles of individuals or families. The use of rebuses as a puzzle format emerged in the 17th century, and they have remained popular ever since.

From the same website on March 6th 2023, there are 15 rebus puzzles (shown in Figure 2) relating to Mathematics and Science.

Figure 2: source

At first glance, I have no idea whatever as to how each puzzle encodes the name of a movie but I'll keep working on them. I like the idea of creating rebus puzzles purely out of numbers. Figure 3 shows an example of a rebus puzzle that relies on letters and numbers.

Figure 3: source

It didn't take me too long to figure that one out (safety in numbers). Figure 4 shows a puzzle that conforms to my ideal of only using numbers and mathematical symbols. It comes from a site dedicated to such puzzles.

Figure 4: source

I didn't quite get it. I was thinking along the lines of "the root of ... " and wishing that the number was 666 rather than 66. Then it might have been "the root of all evil" as the number 666 have evil connotations. However, it wasn't "root" but "route" and then of course the answer is simply "route 66". Clever. I may pursue these sorts of puzzles further on Mathematics blog.