Twenty short strings of emoji, numbered down the left, each with a ruled line beside it to write the answer on. A tree and a star. A door, a ring and a sprig of leaves. A pie and a bunch of grapes. Every line stands for one Christmas thing and the job is to say what. There is not a word of writing anywhere on the sheet, which is most of why it works. Two pages, answers on the second.
What a line of emoji is asking for
Each puzzle is a small rebus. The emoji stand for the thing rather than spelling it out, so a bang next to a paper crown is a cracker and a cardboard box next to a calendar is Boxing Day. Once somebody at the table gets the first one, the rest come a good deal faster.
They are not all the same difficulty, which is deliberate. A tree and a light bulb is instant. Three crowns and a camel takes a moment. A television, a crown and a clock is one a British table will get before anybody else does, and a bell with a line through it beside a city at night is the one people stare at longest.
The pool holds twenty-four and the sheet takes twenty, so four sit out every time. Press Shuffle and a different twenty comes up, which is how you get a second round out of the same page without anybody recognising it.
A sheet with no writing on it
There is no heading and no line of instructions, which is the pattern every picture-style sheet here follows. The space goes to the puzzles instead: the emoji print about 8.5mm tall on A4, roughly the size of a 24 point letter, so nobody has to lean in to tell a bauble from a clock.
The answer line runs from the end of each puzzle to the right-hand margin. That is far more room than any of the answers need, which means a child writing large still fits, and twenty of them fill one side of the paper.
The answers are on the back as a numbered list with the emoji printed again beside each one, so you mark by eye down a single column rather than turning sheets over to check what number fourteen was.
The round that works on a mixed table
A written quiz quietly asks everybody to read at the same speed. This one does not. A child who would struggle through a page of quiz questions reads a row of emoji as fast as an adult does, and that is rare enough in a party game to be worth building an evening around.
Nothing has to be read out either, so the sheets can go on the table as people arrive and the room fills up with people arguing over number nineteen instead of standing about with nothing to do. Mark it whenever you get round to it.
For a second round with no words in it, the picture quiz does the same job with line drawings in place of emoji. One of each gives a table forty things to name and not a single question anybody has to read aloud.
Questions
- How do you play a Christmas emoji game?
- Hand out the sheet and give everyone a pen. Each numbered line of emoji stands for one Christmas thing: a carol, a tradition, something you eat. The answer goes on the ruled line beside it, and you mark from the list on the back.
- How many emoji puzzles are on the sheet?
- Twenty, drawn from a pool of twenty-four, so four of them are left out of any one print. Press Shuffle and a different twenty comes up in a different order, which gives you a second sheet for a second team.
- Does the answer sheet print with it?
- Yes, on the second page, as a numbered list with the emoji repeated beside each answer. Set Answer sheet to Questions only and you get the puzzle page on its own, which is the one to photocopy for a room.
- Is it too hard for young children?
- No, and it is one of the few quizzes here a child can beat an adult at. Working out a row of emoji does not depend on reading speed, so a six year old who knows what a wreath is will get the door and the ring of leaves straight away.
- Can I print different sheets for different teams?
- Yes. Press Shuffle between prints and each team gets a different twenty out of the twenty-four. Print the same sheet twice instead if you would rather the teams were scored against exactly the same puzzles.