Actually, my question is: what happened to rebus puzzles? When I was a boy in Germany, they were in just about every newspaper alongside crossword puzzles and other brainteasers to give us many hours of entertainment.
I cannot understand why they so suddenly and completely disappeared. As the name "rebus" suggests which comes from the Latin phrase non verbis, sed rebus, which means "not by words, but by things", they've been around ever since people began to use pictures to represent the sounds of a word, to make other words (think of Egyptian hieroglyphs).
My German fascination with rebuses never helped me much after I had come to Australia. Image the poor girl's response if, after a dance or two at the Canberra Police Boys' Club, I had handed her this rebus card?
... which reminds me: a rare worn-down pencil said to have belonged to the "Bard of Avon", William Shakespeare, has just been unearthed in England; however, the experts are not sure if the pencil is 2B or not 2B.
