Ruby Rebus

One of my favorite things on the Totally Rad Show is their RADRebus segment. In it, Alex, Dan, and Jeff try to guess movie titles from word/picture puzzles called rebuses.

For the uninitiated, I’ve embedded the first ever RADRebus episode right there ↓

I was watching TRS the other day and thought it’d be fun makes some rebuses with Ruby. So I did!

An Example Rebus

If you don’t want to watch the RADRebus video and you don’t know what a rebus is, an example may help out. Here is a movie rebus taken from Eric Harshbarger’s list of 100 Movie Rebus Puzzles.

The puzzle is this:

chiTROUBLEna

And the answer is Big Touble in Little China.

See how that works? Good.

The Challenge

I have created 20 Ruby-based rebuses representing movie titles. Some are pretty easy, but others I hope will pose a challenge.

See if you can figure out all 20 and post your answers in the comments!

Rebus #1

require "active_record"

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base; end
Person.where(sex: "M", age: 78).map(&:country).compact
# => []

Rebus #2

%w(stand sit walk run him her me you) & %w(put place stand lean them we me us)

Rebus #3

while true do
  Time.new(1993, 2, 2, 6, 0, 0, "-05:00")
  sleep 86_400
end

Rebus #4

inside = []
ones = %w(one one one one)
inside << ones.last

Rebus #5

begin
  Class.new { private; def ryan; end }.new.ryan
rescue
end

Rebus #6

def movie(episode)
  case episode
  when 4 then "Guinness"
  when 5 then "Prowse"
  when 6 then "Hamill"
end

Rebus #7

Batman.new

Rebus #8

require "singleton"

class Parent; end
class Child < Parent; include Singleton; end
ObjectSpace.each_object(::Class).find { |klass| klass < Parent  }.instance

Rebus #9

class Murder
  def self.inspect
    [ methods,
      instance_methods,
      ancestors
    ].join(", ")
  end
end

Murder.inspect

Rebus #10

[["Switch", "Dozer", "Mouse"],
 ["Tank", "Cypher", "Apoc"]]

Rebus #11

"otnemem".reverse

Rebus #12

"husband & wife".split(" & ")

Rebus #13

"fish".upcase

Rebus #14

{
  lucy: "Ishii",
  vivica: "Green",
  daryl: "Driver",
  michael: "Budd",
  david: "Bill"
}.clear

Rebus #15

require "timecop"

Timecop.freeze Date.parse("2012-12-21") do
  Time.now
end

Rebus #16

class Hash
  alias :movie :fetch
end

Rebus #17

require "rspec"

Fowl.should_receive(:kill).with(2) { nil }

Rebus #18

Process.kill 9, 1988

Rebus #19

"11:59".gsub(":", ".").to_f.ceil

Rebus #20

10.times.map { "pennies" }[5]

Bonus Challenge!

All of the movies in this list have a common bond. Can you figure out what it is?

(tip: if you can figure out the bonus question early on may will help you get the more difficult rebuses.)

The Answers

UPDATE: The answers post is now available

I will reveal the answers to all 20 rebuses and the bonus challenge in a follow-up post.

Be sure to grab the RSS, follow along on Twitter, or bookmark this page so you don’t miss the BIG reveal! ;)

· Jerod Santo ·