Meaning & use
puzzle
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Meanings
nouncountable
A game or problem made to be worked out by thinking, such as a crossword or a set of jigsaw pieces to fit together.
Grammar: Count noun: a crossword puzzle, three puzzles.
Patterns
- solve a puzzle
- a puzzle about something
Grandpa does a crossword puzzle every morning with his tea.
The children spent the rainy afternoon on a thousand-piece puzzle.
She enjoys logic puzzles that need careful reasoning.
nouncountable
Something confusing or hard to explain, especially a person or event whose cause or meaning is not clear.
Grammar: Often singular and followed by to or of: a puzzle to scientists.
Patterns
- a puzzle to someone
- a puzzle of something
Why the bridge cracked is still a puzzle to the engineers.
His sudden resignation remains a puzzle to his colleagues.
The missing money was a real puzzle until the audit found the error.
verbtransitive
To make someone confused because they cannot understand or explain something.
Grammar: Takes an object: the result puzzled me.
Patterns
- something puzzles someone
Her silence at the meeting puzzled everyone.
It puzzles me that the shop is always closed on Fridays.
The strange noise puzzled the mechanic.
verbintransitive
To think hard about a problem in an effort to understand or solve it.
Grammar: Used with over, about or at: puzzle over a clue. A phrasal form, puzzle out, takes an object.
Patterns
- puzzle over something
- puzzle about something
- puzzle something out
We puzzled over the map for an hour before finding the trail.
He sat puzzling about how to fix the leak.
She finally puzzled out the meaning of the riddle.
Word forms
| plural | puzzles |
|---|---|
| third person singular | puzzles |
| past tense | puzzled |
| past participle | puzzled |
| -ing form | puzzling |
Common combinations
- solve a puzzle
- It took the team ten minutes to solve the puzzle.
- a jigsaw puzzle
- They left the jigsaw puzzle half finished on the table.
- a crossword puzzle
- He filled in the last clue of the crossword puzzle.
- a puzzle piece
- One puzzle piece had slipped under the sofa.
- puzzle over
- Scientists continue to puzzle over the origin of the signal.
- puzzle out
- I could not puzzle out what the note meant.
Synonyms and how they differ
- mystery
- Mystery suggests something hidden or unexplained that may never be solved, while a puzzle usually has an answer you can reach by thinking.
- riddle
- A riddle is a specific kind of puzzle in the form of a tricky question, so it is narrower than puzzle.
- baffle
- Baffle as a verb is stronger than puzzle and suggests someone is completely unable to find an explanation.
- perplex
- Perplex is more formal than puzzle and often implies a worried, tangled confusion.
Opposites
Word family
- puzzling adjective
- hard to understand or explain
- puzzled adjective
- confused and unable to understand
- puzzlement noun
- a state of being confused
- puzzler noun
- a person who enjoys or solves puzzles, or a hard puzzle
Commonly confused: puzzle or puzzled?
puzzle vs puzzled
Puzzled describes the person who is confused, while puzzling describes the thing that causes the confusion: I was puzzled by a puzzling result.
Practice
The cause of the power cuts remains a ___ to the engineers.
Choose one answer.
Puzzle fits because the cause is still unexplained. Solution and result would mean the question has already been answered.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “puzzle”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.