15 Jingle all the way 🔔
On December 16, 1965, astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra surprised mission control by suddenly pulling out their bells and harmonica mid-transmission and playing a short passage from the ever popular Christmas song “Jingle Bells.” Sung in Christmas carols and remixed for a special Batman rendition, it’s a classic Christmas tune, and oday, we carry on this spontaneous and joyful holiday spirit by pulling out a Jingle Bells-themed hanmoji.
This is Hanmoji Puzzles, your weekly dose of emoji word puzzles inspired by The Hanmoji Handbook. And don’t worry — you don’t need to speak Chinese at all in order to play along. You just need a love for emoji and be curious about how language works!
🧩 This week’s puzzle
What single Chinese character does this emoji combo represent?
🌲💇🏻♀️💇🏻♀️💇🏻♀️
Hint: The answer can be found in the lyrics to Jingle Bells - something that’s fun to ride while singing.
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🫢 Answer (spoilers ahead!)
🌲💇🏻♀️💇🏻♀️💇🏻♀️ stands for 橇, which means sled or sleigh. It’s pronounced qiāo in Mandarin, and hiu1 in Cantonese. And this time it’s a little phonetic and a little semantic — but helpfully, all of the radicals give hints to its meaning.
First we have 木🌲, the character and radical for wood or wood-related things. Then remember our radical from last issue 毛 💇🏻♀️, which means fur or hair. And really, what is a sled but a pile of wood that’s being pulled along by a bundle of fur (aka one big or a pack of animals).
毳 (made up of three 毛 💇🏻♀️, one on top and two on the bottom) functions as a phonetic radical too. It’s commonly pronounced cuì in Mandarin and ceoi3 in Cantonese, but it can also be pronounced qiāo and xiā in Mandarin. But it’s a lot more fun to remember the fuzzy reindeer pulling the sled along delivering Christmas gifts around the world.
Happy holidays friends!
🥳 Updates from our parent project, The Hanmoji Handbook
Kirkus has named us as one of their Best Middle-Grade Nonfiction of 2022 picks.
We’ve been nominated for a Forest of Reading Yellow Cedar Award. Tell your Canadian grade schoolers (and teachers and librarians) to take a look at the books and vote for their favorites!
Our book is now out — order it now on IndieBound 🇺🇸, Shop Local 🇨🇦, Blackwell’s 🌏, Barnes & Noble 🇺🇸, or Indigo 🇨🇦.
Hanmoji Puzzles is a spin off of The Hanmoji Handbook: A Guide to Learning Chinese Through Emoji, which you should absolutely order today 😗. This newsletter is a project by Jason Li, An Xiao Mina and Jennifer 8. Lee.