puzzle
part of speech
noun (puzzle, puzzles); verb (puzzle, puzzles, puzzled, puzzling)
meaning for a pupil
1) A puzzle is a game or problem you solve by thinking, like a jigsaw with many pieces, a crossword or a riddle. tree →
2) A puzzle is something hard to understand: «Where the cat went is a puzzle». tree →
3) To puzzle is to make someone wonder or feel confused. tree →
4) To puzzle over something is to think hard about it. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths: things counted: puzzles bought or solved, pieces in a jigsaw puzzle; also a hard question to solve; logic and number puzzles like sudoku. In science: a mystery to solve with tests. In everyday life: jigsaws, crosswords, brain teasers. In stories: «the detective was puzzled by the footprints».
examples
- A puzzle has 500 pieces. tree →
- Lily has put together 120 pieces of the puzzle. tree →
- Each puzzle costs $8. tree →
- He solves 4 puzzles a day. tree →
- Grandpa does the crossword puzzle every morning. tree →
- Sudoku is a number puzzle. tree →
- The missing cookies were a puzzle. tree →
- The strange noise puzzled us. tree →
- She puzzled over the riddle for an hour. tree →
- He was quite puzzled when he reached the market-place. tree →
note
Pieces of a puzzle make a total; pieces done and pieces left add up to the whole. Trap: «puzzle» counts whole games, «pieces» counts parts, do not mix them. Spelling: double «z». «Puzzled» means confused; «puzzling» means confusing.
In the corpora
- Many puzzling things have a boring reason.
- For every puzzle ask three questions: What do the words really mean?
- For every puzzle ask: What has to happen first?
- Octopuses can solve puzzles, open jars, learn by watching and remember people; wild ones carry coconut shell halves to hide in.
- Pigs learn tricks and solve puzzles as well as many dogs, and they can use a mirror to find food hidden behind them.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «puzzle» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.