Puzzles

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Related to Puzzles: riddles

puz·zle

(pŭz′əl)

1. Something, such as a game, toy, or problem, that requires ingenuity and often persistence in solving or assembling.

2. Something that baffles or confuses; an enigma: the puzzle of the author's true identity.

3. The condition of being perplexed; bewilderment: I'm really in a puzzle over how this happened.

v. puz·zled, puz·zling, puz·zles

v.tr.

1. To baffle or confuse mentally by presenting or being a difficult problem or matter. See Synonyms at perplex.

2. To clarify or solve (something confusing) by reasoning or study: He puzzled out the significance of the statement.

v.intr.

1. To be perplexed.

2. To ponder over a problem in an effort to solve or understand it.

[Origin unknown.]

puz′zler n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Puzzles

See also games.

enigmatography

the art or skill of composing enigmas. — enigmatographer, n.

enigmatology

the analysis of enigmas.

logology

the pursuit of word puzzles or puzzling words. — logologist, n.

References in classic literature ?

"Well," said Dorothy, "there used to be a picture puzzle craze in Kansas, and so I've had some 'sperience matching puzzles.

"Never; for we are no puzzles to ourselves, and so there wouldn't be any fun in it."

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"You know that little, wrinkly Mexican that sells wire puzzles?" Saxon queried.

"Well, just like the little Mexican, he seems to spend his time peddling puzzles. He passes a puzzle out to everybody, and they spend all their lives tryin' to work it out They all get stuck.

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You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest guesses at what they were for.

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WHEN we are little, there are many things we cannot understand; we puzzle about them a good deal perhaps, and then we ask questions.

And just as there are things which puzzle little folks, there are things which puzzle big folks.

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"You can't solve my puzzle for me, then?" he persisted.

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He could curl up and look at the pictures in the strange things which were books, he could puzzle out the printed word he had learned to read without knowledge of the spoken language it represented, he could live in a wonderful world of which he had no knowledge beyond the covers of his beloved books.

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Having failed in those days to discover why I was driven from the garden, I suppose I ceased to be enamoured of myself, as of some dull puzzle, and then perhaps the whimsicalities began to collect unnoticed.

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What a sane man should be doing carrying about with him a woman's petticoat and silk stockings, may well be a puzzle to the most intelligent reader.

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How such a topsy-turvy scene ever came to be tolerated in the colonel's office, of all places, was afterward a puzzle in the memory of many, including the colonel.