Emoji quiz questions: can you guess the movie, song, or phrase?

Every quiz night needs at least one round that isn't just "who wrote this" or "what year did that happen." An emoji quiz is that round. A string of pictures stands in for a movie, a song, or a phrase, and teams have to work backwards from the pictures to the answer.

It's a different kind of thinking than most trivia rounds ask for. You're not recalling a fact, you're decoding a little puzzle, and that makes it a great leveller. The team that knows every Best Picture winner since 1960 doesn't necessarily have an edge here. Anyone who's paid attention to pop culture, or just has a knack for lateral thinking, can do well.

Below are 14 emoji puzzles split into movies, songs, and everyday phrases, running roughly from easy to properly tricky. Read each one, have a go at guessing before you scroll to the answer, and steal whichever ones suit your crowd.

Movies

1🦁👑

Answer:The Lion King (a lion cub is destined to rule after his father dies, in a story often summed up as "the circle of life")(click to reveal)

2🕷️🧑

Answer:Spider-Man (a teenager gets bitten by a radioactive spider and starts swinging between buildings in tights)(click to reveal)

3🐠🔍🌊

Answer:Finding Nemo (a clownfish dad searches the ocean for his missing son)(click to reveal)

4🦖🏞️

Answer:Jurassic Park (scientists clone dinosaurs, and it goes about as well as you'd expect)(click to reveal)

5🚢🧊

Answer:Titanic (a doomed ocean liner meets an iceberg, and there's a whole debate about whether two people could've fit on that door)(click to reveal)

6⏰🚗⚡

Answer:Back to the Future (a teenager and his scientist friend rig up a sports car to travel through time)(click to reveal)

Songs

7🎆

Answer:"Firework" by Katy Perry (one emoji doing a lot of work here, but the chorus more or less spells it out)(click to reveal)

8🧟💃🌕

Answer:"Thriller" by Michael Jackson (zombies, a full moon, and one of the most imitated dance routines ever filmed)(click to reveal)

9👑💃

Answer:"Dancing Queen" by ABBA (young and sweet, only seventeen, according to the lyrics)(click to reveal)

10😊👏

Answer:"Happy" by Pharrell Williams (you know the clapping beat, you've heard it at every wedding since it came out)(click to reveal)

Phrases and Idioms

11🍰

Answer:Piece of cake (meaning something is easy, not an actual dessert order)(click to reveal)

12🐱🐶🌧️

Answer:It's raining cats and dogs (an old English idiom for heavy rain; nobody's entirely sure how the animals got involved)(click to reveal)

13🦵💥

Answer:Break a leg (theatre slang for good luck, since saying "good luck" directly is supposedly bad luck)(click to reveal)

14🐘🛋️

Answer:Elephant in the room (an obvious problem that everyone in the conversation is carefully avoiding)(click to reveal)

Tips for running an emoji round

Read each string slowly and let people write things down. Emoji puzzles reward a second look, so don't rush past one just because the room goes quiet. Silence usually means people are working it out, not that the clue's a dud.

Mix your categories. A round of nothing but films gets predictable fast. Swapping between movies, songs, and phrases (like the three sections above) keeps teams guessing at the category as well as the answer, which adds a layer of fun.

Watch out for clues that are too literal or too obscure. A single emoji that could mean five different things isn't a fair clue, and neither is a string so specific that nobody without insider knowledge could ever land on it. Aim for the middle: a picture that clicks once you see it, even if it takes a moment.

Award partial credit where it's earned. If a team gets "raining cats and dogs" but writes "it's chucking it down," give them the point. The emoji format is about recognising the idea, not reciting an exact phrase.

If you want more ready-made rounds to pair this with, our film quiz questions and music quiz questions posts cover the same two categories in the standard question-and-answer format. And if you'd rather build a custom round from scratch, including one to test out your own emoji clues, our quiz creator makes it quick to put together and run on the night.