puzzle#

puzzle vb Puzzle, perplex, mystify, bewilder, distract, nonplus, confound, dumbfound are comparable when they mean to disturb and baffle mentally or throw into mental confusion. The first three words express various mental reactions to what is intricate, complicated, or involved.

Puzzle implies such complication or intricacy that the mind finds it exceedingly, often distressingly, difficult to understand or to solve

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a great poet may tax our brains, but he ought not to puzzle our wits— Birrell

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there was much that impressed, puzzled and troubled a foreign observer about the new Germany— Shirer

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Perplex adds to puzzle the implications of worry and uncertainty, especially about reaching a decision on a course of action or the right solution of a personal problem

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Southerners . . . were terribly perplexed and torn when the conceptions on which they had been living began to be broken down— Edmund Wilson

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To mystify is to perplex, sometimes by playing upon one's credulity, but more often by concealing im-portant facts or factors or by obscuring issues

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when she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen, she turned to find fresh sport in mystifying her own ministers— J. R. Green

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once prescriptions were written almost altogether in Latin. This was not done to mystify the patient— Fishbein

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Bewilder often implies perplexity, but it stresses a confused state of mind that makes clear thinking and complete comprehension practically impossible

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bewildered by contradictory statements and orders

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do not run to the Socialists or the Capitalists, or to your favorite newspaper, to make up your mind for you: they will only unsettle and bewilder you— Shaw

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Distract implies strong agitation arising from divergent or conflicting considerations or interests

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she seemed nervous and distracted, kept glancing over her shoulder, and crushing her handkerchief up in her hands— Cather

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conscious of... a current of unsaid speeches, which would distract her feelings and perhaps confuse a little her thoughts— Gibbonsy

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The last three words imply less mental disturbance and distress than some of the preceding terms, but they heighten the implication of bafflement and mental confusion.

Nonplus implies blankness of mind or utter inability to find anything worth saying or doing

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the problem which nonplusses the wisest heads on this planet, has become quite a familiar companion of mine. What is reality?— L. P. Smith

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she was utterly nonplussed by the pair of them .... What on earth were they?— Goudge

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Confound (see also MISTAKE) implies mental confusion, but it stresses the implication either of mental paralysis or of profound astonishment

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so spake the son of God; and Satan stood a while as mute, confounded— Milton

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language to him is a means of communication .... He does not wish to dazzle or confound his friends, but only to make himself understood— Crothers

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this sorrow . . . seemed to have confounded him beyond all hope— Styron

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Dumbfound tends to replace confound in casual and oral use

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I cannot wriggle out of it; I am dumbfounded— Darwin

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he captured the public and dumbfounded the critics— Macy

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Sometimes dumbfound so strongly implies astonishment that it is used in place of astound

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I was dumbfounded to hear him say that I was on a quixotic enterprise— William Lawrence

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Analogous words: amaze, astound, flabbergast (see SURPRISE): *confuse, muddle, addle: *embarrass, disconcert, discomfit

puzzle n *mystery, problem, enigma, riddle, conundrum