puzzle
Pluralpuzzles
Verbpuzzles, puzzling, puzzled
Pluralpuzzles
Formspuzzles, puzzling, puzzled
- 1A game, played alone or with others, that takes some effort to work out or complete.
She enjoys any puzzle that takes real effort to solve.
The party included several puzzles designed for small teams.
Similarbrainteaser, problem
Note
Games came last in the word's history. The toy sense dates only to 1814, more than two centuries after the verb meaning 'perplex'. Today it is the umbrella sense, which is why a crossword or a jigsaw can simply be called a puzzle. What makes something a puzzle rather than another game is that it has to be worked out.
- 2To perplex or confuse someone, leaving them faced with a mystery they cannot explain.
The detective's odd behavior puzzles his colleagues.
These results puzzle scientists who expected a clear pattern.
Similarperplex, baffle, confuse, bewilder, mystify
Oppositeenlighten
Note
The oldest use of the word dates from the 1590s. It is transitive: the cause is the subject and the baffled person is the object. Its participles work as adjectives, and Henry More in 1668 already plays them against each other, describing a disputant 'most puzzled' himself yet 'dexterous in puzzling others.' Puzzled describes the person; puzzling describes the cause.
- 3Something that baffles people because it is hard to understand or to make sense of.
The origin of the artifact remains a puzzle to historians.
His disappearance is one of the great puzzles of the case.
Similarmystery, enigma, riddle, conundrum
Note
The noun grew out of the verb, not the other way round. The word was first spelled pusle, perhaps from pose 'to perplex' plus the frequentative -le, though its origin is uncertain. The verb 'to perplex' appears in the 1590s, and this sense of a perplexing question follows in the 1650s. Such a puzzle is usually a puzzle to someone, and it tends to remain one.
- 4To think long and carefully about something while feeling bewildered.
Scholars still puzzle over the meaning of the ancient text.
He puzzled endlessly about why she had left.
Similarponder, wonder, muse, brood
Note
Unlike the 'perplex' meaning, where the mystery acts on someone, here the person is the subject and works at the mystery. The verb takes no object and usually pairs with over or about: we puzzled over the lock. The sense carries effort as well as bewilderment, meaning long, careful thought that may still fail, as it does with the curious-shaped lock.
- 5A flat picture cut into irregular interlocking pieces meant to be reassembled into the whole image.
He glued the completed puzzle to a board and hung it on the wall.
Half the puzzle pieces were missing from the old box.
Similarjigsaw
- 6A grid-based word game in which clues lead to answers written into numbered squares.
The Sunday puzzle had clues that crossed both directions across the grid.
He penciled answers into the puzzle, counting letters for each clue.
Similarcrossword
- 7A question or statement deliberately phrased so that it requires clever thought to answer.
The sphinx posed a puzzle whose answer turned out to be 'man.'
He loves puzzles that turn on a single clever word.
Similarriddle, conundrum, brainteaser
- 8The state of being confused or perplexed about something.
She remained in a puzzle, turning the mystery over and over in her mind.
His evident puzzle at the question made everyone laugh.
Similarconfusion, perplexity, bewilderment, bafflement, quandary
Note
The earliest noun use, from about 1600, named the bewilderment itself rather than its cause. Its natural home is the phrase in a puzzle, much as one is in a quandary. Outside that phrase, perplexity does the job more clearly. A sentence like 'his puzzle at the question' risks being read as the thing that baffles.
- 9To tangle something or make it intricate and difficult to resolve.
They disentangle from the puzzled skein.
1782, William Cowper, The TaskNote
The tangle here is in the thing itself, not in anyone's mind. Addison's Cato (1713) has heaven's ways 'puzzled in mazes,' and Cowper's The Task a 'puzzled skein' of thread. It appears mostly as the past participle standing like an adjective, and it has a literary, eighteenth-century ring. A modern writer would usually say tangled or intricate.
Less common meaning
- 10An object made with marvelous skill; something of ingenious construction.
The cathedral's interlocking vaults stood as a puzzle of medieval engineering.
He kept on his shelf a little puzzle of carved wood, each joint hidden from the eye.
Note
Here the admiration goes to the maker, not the solver. A puzzle in this older sense is a marvel of ingenious construction, and no one needs to work it out. The use is now archaic, so in modern prose a marvel or a feat of ingenuity is clearer. A present-day reader will otherwise assume the game to be solved.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
The origin is uncertain; it was originally "pusle". It possibly comes from "pose" (to perplex or interrogate) plus the frequentative suffix "-le". The verb meaning "to perplex" (1590s) seems to predate the noun senses, such as the "state of being perplexed" (around 1600) and later the "toy" (1814).