Christmas emoji quiz: 24 festive puzzles with answers

An emoji round is the one people photograph. It works because it doesn't test knowledge so much as lateral thinking, which means the table that's been losing all night suddenly has a chance, and nobody can feel stupid for not knowing the answer.

At Christmas it works even better, because the shared reference pool is enormous. Everyone knows the films, the songs and the traditions, so the puzzle is purely in the decoding.

Here are 24 Christmas emoji puzzles across films, songs and festive things, plus notes on pitching the difficulty and making your own.

Christmas films

1🏠 😱 👦

Answer:Home Alone(click to reveal)

2🧝‍♂️ 🗽 🍝 🍬

Answer:Elf(click to reveal)

3💀 🎃 ➡️ 🎄

Answer:The Nightmare Before Christmas(click to reveal)

4💚 😠 🏔️ 🎄

Answer:The Grinch(click to reveal)

5🚂 ❄️ 🎅 🎫

Answer:The Polar Express(click to reveal)

6💥 🏢 🎄 👮‍♂️

Answer:Die Hard(click to reveal)

7❤️ ➕ 🎬 🇬🇧

Answer:Love Actually(click to reveal)

8⛪ 🔔 👼 🌉

Answer:It's a Wonderful Life(click to reveal)

9☃️ 🚶‍♂️ 🌬️ ✈️

Answer:The Snowman(click to reveal)

10🎅 📄 ✍️ 👨

Answer:The Santa Clause(click to reveal)

Christmas songs and carols

11🦌 🔴 👃

Answer:Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer(click to reveal)

12⬜ 🎄

Answer:"White Christmas"(click to reveal)

13🌃 🤫 🌟

Answer:"Silent Night"(click to reveal)

14🔔 🎸 🕺

Answer:"Jingle Bell Rock"(click to reveal)

15🧒 🥁 🥁 🥁

Answer:"Little Drummer Boy"(click to reveal)

161️⃣2️⃣ 📅 🎄

Answer:"The Twelve Days of Christmas"(click to reveal)

17🎅 🏙️ 🚶 ⏰

Answer:"Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town"(click to reveal)

18👑 🤴 ❄️ 👣

Answer:"Good King Wenceslas"(click to reveal)

193️⃣ 🤴 🐫 🎁

Answer:"We Three Kings"(click to reveal)

20⬅️ 🎄 💔

Answer:"Last Christmas"(click to reveal)

Festive things

21💋 🌿

Answer:Kissing under the mistletoe(click to reveal)

22🥧 🥩 🍬

Answer:A mince pie(click to reveal)

23🧦 🔥 🏠

Answer:A stocking hung by the fireplace(click to reveal)

24🌰 🔥 🎵

Answer:Chestnuts roasting on an open fire(click to reveal)

How to pitch the difficulty

The most common mistake is making them too hard. You know the answer when you build the puzzle, which makes every one of them feel obvious, and then nobody in the room gets a single point.

Three or four emoji is usually the sweet spot. One or two is ambiguous, and six becomes a cluttered picture nobody can read from the back of the pub.

Give a category for each section, like the headings above. "Christmas films" narrows the search enormously and turns an impossible puzzle into a satisfying one. Without a category, 🔔 could be forty different things.

Avoid emoji that render differently across devices. If you're printing answer sheets this doesn't matter, but if teams are looking at the puzzle on a screen or their own phones, some of the more obscure symbols appear as a blank box on older handsets.

Making your own

Start from the answer and strip it back. Write out the title, pick the two or three most visual words in it, and find emoji for those. Then take one away and see if it still works.

Mix the lengths. A round where every puzzle is exactly three emoji gets monotonous, and varying it between two and five keeps teams paying attention.

Ten to twelve puzzles is a round. It's a format that teams enjoy but it's also mentally tiring in a way that answering questions isn't, so don't run twenty-five of them in one go.

If you want non-festive versions, our emoji quiz questions covers films, songs and phrases across the year. For the rest of a Christmas night, there's our Christmas quiz round ideas and the Christmas film quiz questions set. The quiz creator will put the puzzles on screen for you.