puzzles

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of puzzle.

   The magazine prints a fresh batch of crossword puzzles each week.

   Several puzzles in the exhibit had no known solution.

   Note

   Most uses count things a person sets out to solve: crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, riddles, games that take working out. The abstract meaning, matters hard to make sense of, takes the plural just as easily (the puzzles of the case). An older meaning, an ingeniously made object, is now archaic. A determiner or number marks the noun (two puzzles, these puzzles) and separates it from the verb meaning "perplexes".

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of puzzle.

   The missing chapter puzzles scholars who study the original manuscript.

   It puzzles me that the lights keep flickering at the same hour.

   Note

   A verb form that works both with and without an object. With one, the subject causes the confusion: the delay puzzles everyone. Without one, the subject is the person doing the long, bewildered thinking: he sits and puzzles for an hour. A rarer transitive meaning is to entangle, which makes a matter intricate rather than confusing a person.

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