puzzle
Other forms: puzzled; puzzling; puzzles
To puzzle over something is to try to understand or solve it. Picture someone struggling with a jigsaw puzzle, trying to figure out how all those tiny pieces fit together to form an image. That person is puzzling over a puzzle!
When something puzzles you, it confuses and mystifies you. New technology might continually puzzle your grandfather, while your grandmother is quick to figure it out. When you puzzle over a difficult book or the instructions to your new TV, it's like you're trying to piece together a tricky puzzle — a challenging game or problem. The classic puzzle is a jigsaw puzzle, a picture that's split into small, oddly-shaped pieces you need to reassemble into a whole. There are also logic puzzles, crossword puzzles, and mechanical puzzles like a Rubik's Cube. If you can't figure a person out, you can also call them a puzzle.
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be uncertain about; think about without fully understanding or being able to decide“We puzzled over her sudden departure”
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type of:
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chew over, contemplate, excogitate, meditate, mull, mull over, muse, ponder, reflect, ruminate, speculate, think over
reflect deeply on a subject
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chew over, contemplate, excogitate, meditate, mull, mull over, muse, ponder, reflect, ruminate, speculate, think over
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be a mystery or bewildering to
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synonyms:
amaze, baffle, beat, bewilder, dumbfound, flummox, get, gravel, mystify, nonplus, perplex, pose, stick, stupefy, vex
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types:
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mix up, stump
cause to be perplexed or confounded
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riddle
set a difficult problem or riddle
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elude, escape
be incomprehensible to; escape understanding by
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defy, refuse, resist
elude, especially in a baffling way
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a game that tests your ingenuity
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types:
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Chinese puzzle
intricate or ingenious puzzle consisting of boxes within boxes
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jigsaw, jigsaw puzzle
a puzzle that requires you to reassemble a picture that has been mounted on a stiff base and cut into interlocking pieces
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tangram
a Chinese puzzle consisting of a square divided into seven pieces that must be arranged to match particular designs
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crossword, crossword puzzle
a puzzle in which words corresponding to numbered clues are to be found and written in to squares in the puzzle
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type of:
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game
the game equipment needed in order to play a particular game
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a particularly baffling problem that is said to have a correct solution“he loved to solve chessmate puzzles”
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types:
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sudoku
a number puzzle in which the numbers 1 through 9 must be placed into a grid of cells so that each row or column contains only one of each number
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acrostic, word square
a puzzle where you fill a square grid with words reading the same down as across
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type of:
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problem
a question raised for consideration or solution
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sudoku
/ˈpəzəl/
/ˈpəzəl/
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