Other forms: puzzles, puzzled, puzzling
A puzzle is a picture cut into a hundred little pieces that you fit back together on the kitchen table. Corners and edges first, then the sky last, because the sky is all one colour.
Any problem set to be solved is a puzzle: a crossword, a riddle, a wooden puzzle with a hidden catch in it. It is also anything you cannot explain, so why he left without saying goodbye is a puzzle to everyone. As a verb it means to confuse, as in her answer puzzled me. Two phrasal verbs earn their keep here, since you puzzle over a thing while you are stuck on it and you puzzle it out when you finally get there. Someone who looks puzzled is not angry or lost; the pieces simply will not fit yet.
1nounpuzzleA picture cut into small pieces to be fitted back together.~2%
“We did a thousand-piece puzzle over Christmas.”
synonyms: jigsaw
2noungameA game or question set to test your cleverness.~94%
“The magazine prints a chess puzzle every week.”
3nounmysterySomething that is hard to understand or explain.~2%
“His sudden resignation is still a puzzle to his colleagues.”
4verbconfuseTo confuse someone, so that they cannot understand.~2%
“The letter puzzled her, since she had never heard of the sender.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: jigsaw
Nobody has found where puzzle came from. Its likely relatives are all words for fiddling and pottering about: Scots poozle, to poke about aimlessly, German Low German pusseln, to tinker, and German bosseln, to do trivial work. If they belong together, a puzzle took its name not from the picture but from the fussing you do over it.
Built from
The, of unknown origin, is attested first. Apparently cognate with Scots pousle, pouzle, poozle (“to trifle; poke or potter around aimlessly; search about with uncertainty”), stq puzelje (“to work hard and continuously”), West Frisian peuzelje (“to trifle, work slowly; eat slowly and daintifully, snack”), Dutch peuzelen (“to perform insignificant work, dawdle; pick at, eat with relish in small pieces, snack”), German Low German pusseln (“to tinker, fiddle; trifle”) and pöseln (“to work hard, toil; to slave away; suffer at work; work slowly and ineffectively”), German posseln, bosseln (“to perform trivial work, tinker”), Danish pusle (“to busy oneself with light work or chores; to be occupied with a task requiring ingenuity, care, and patience; to tinker”), Swedish pyssla (“to do light work; tinker; putter or potter around”), Norwegian Nynorsk pusla, putla (“to potter about”), Faroese putla (“to trifle; potter about; do one's work slowly; be dilatory”), Faroese puss (“damage, trick”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA