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Puzzle   Listen
noun
puzzle  n.  
1.
Something which perplexes or embarrasses; especially, a toy or a problem contrived for testing ingenuity; also, something exhibiting marvelous skill in making.
2.
The state of being puzzled; perplexity; as, to be in a puzzle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books



... materials, the choice would present much less difficulty. Notwithstanding this, most land now has a lime requirement, or will have one as leaching, crop removal and chemical change within the soil continue, and the puzzle is no worse than a score of others that present themselves continuously ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... the English fleet for four days after the engagement—but behold! we had scarce had time to jumble together our sorrow for our situation, and our satisfaction for the despatch we had used to repair it, when yesterday threw us into a new puzzle. Our spies, the French, have sent us intelligence that Galissoni'ere is disgraced, recalled, and La Motte sent to replace him, and that Byng has reinforced the garrison of St. Philip's(698) with—150 men! You, who are nearer the spot, may be able, perhaps, to unriddle or unravel all this confusion; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... received axioms has beset me through life. No sooner does a truth present itself than I want to see it on its other side. If I hear the Devil spoken ill of, I puzzle myself to find what can be said in his favor. The man who thus halts between conflicting opinions, solicitous to give both their due, and to see the truth, pure and simple and entire, may miss laying hold of great convictions till ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... by. The sun will brown and dry her like a spear of grass on that hot slope, but a spark of fine spirit is in the small body, and I wish her a famous crop. I hate to say that the piece looked backward, all except the sage, and that it was a heavy bit of land for the clumsy hoe to pick at. The only puzzle is, what she proposes to do with so long a row of sage. Yet there may be a large family with a downfall of measles yet ahead, and she does not mean ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... bubbles. He and John-Willy had used the occasion to try and add to their store of knowledge, and the memory of that unedifying discussion made Ishmael burn now. That time, too, when he stole his mother's Bible from her room that he might puzzle over portions of it which he had better have left unread. True, it had been John-Willy—whose household did not include a Bible and who could not read—who had started him on the course and urged him on, for as boys go, especially country-bred boys, Ishmael was singularly ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... rather a puzzle," I admitted. "I suppose they might very well be father and daughter. It is certain that she is fresh from some convent boarding-school. I don't like the way she looks at the man, do you? It is as ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... name Hungerford appeared to have been lost in obscurity. According to one gentleman, whose interesting record we afterwards saw, it "has been an etymological puzzle to the topographer and local antiquarian, who have left the matter in the same uncertainty in which they found it"; but if he had accompanied us in our walk that day across those desolate downs, and felt the pangs ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... Catholic Church is the natural home of the human spirit. The odd perspective picture of life which looks like a meaningless puzzle at first, seen from that one standpoint takes a complete order and meaning, like the skull in the picture of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... was resolved to have a hunt by himself. Where our friends had got to by this time, they could not tell. They proposed returning to the ruined house where the hunt had met, but in what direction to find it was the puzzle. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... greatest puzzle which helped to confuse Mark Eden, for there was his father's conduct, so directly opposed to everything which had gone before; but at last, after fighting with his confusion for some time, his head grew clearer, and he drew ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... a pachydermatous hide of self-appreciation, so that he thought nothing about me one way or the other except as a guest of his patrons, and one therefore to whom he was bound to be civil. But with Dr. Brayle it was otherwise. I was a puzzle to him, and—after a brief study of me—an annoyance. He forced himself into conversation with me, however, and we interchanged a few remarks on the weather and on the various beauties of the coast along which we had ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... and wrote me for the measurements. He expressed it to me, and I repacked it and sent it to you," chuckled Doctor Forester. "He was determined to puzzle you completely." ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... specially concerned over the Mayhew muddle, for I believe that handsome Engineer boy is capable of breaking his heart in earnest because Elsie has lost hers pro tem.,—engaging little goose that she is. Really I sometimes think that the man and woman puzzle is just an endless game of cross ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... change in his temper. He quite laid aside all the former gravity of his temper and gave way, in the contrary, to a very extraordinary spirit of obstinacy and unbelief. He puzzled himself continually, and if Mr. Deval, who was then under sentence, would have given leave, attempted to puzzle him too, as to the doctrines of a future state, and an identical resurrection of the body. He said he could not be persuaded of the truth thereof in a literal sense; that when the individual frame of flesh which ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... theology, and in 1509 he became a bachelor of theology, and commenced lecturing on the Holy Scriptures. His lectures made a great impression, and the novelty of his views already began to excite attention. "This monk," said the rector of the university, "will puzzle our doctors and bring in a new doctrine." Besides lecturing, he began to preach, and his sermons reached a wider audience, and produced a still more powerful influence. They were printed and widely ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... "He was one of the very best, and it was not right. He was too young and too much missed. I don't understand it. He had twenty-five years to his credit, and I wanted to show him what I was going to do. It's all a puzzle to me. There's something frightfully wrong about it all, and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... attention that's been paid to your education, I perceive; you've nothing to unlearn anyhow, that's something. Now, sir, do you think that a classical scholar and a gentleman born, like me, is to demane myself by hearing you puzzle at the alphabet? You're quite mistaken, Mr Keene, you must gain your first elements second-hand; so where's Thimothy Ruddel? You, Timothy Ruddel, you'll just teach this young Master Keene his whole alphabet, and take care, at the same time, that you know ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... mistaken, Jasper. I am not cunning. If people think I am, it is because, being made up of art themselves, simplicity of character is a puzzle to them. Your women are ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... looser feeling regarding debts to traders, which we were told were sometimes ignored, partly, perhaps, owing to the traders' heavy profits, but mainly through failure in the hunt and a lack of means. But theft such as white men practice was a puzzle to these people, amongst whom ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... They seemed to falter for a moment, when they beheld our lady companions. They scanned the Methodist and his wife, and took their measure at once But the dressmaker and Miss Mary, hanging on the arms of two of my companions, seemed to puzzle them. Anyhow they hastened towards them, took them by the hand, led them to the place of honour on the sofa, and began the conversation with "Do you speak English ?" I don't recollect now how it all went off, but I know ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... these creatures survived all modes of persecution, and came back into their ruined hovels to defy the law and beard the Church, and went on living—in some strange, mysterious way of their own—an open challenge to all political economy, and a sore puzzle to the Times commissioner when he came to report on the condition of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... was not guilty of a fallacy on this point. His proof that there is no greatest number is valid. The solution of the puzzle is complicated and depends upon the theory of types, which is explained in Principia Mathematica, Vol. I (Camb. Univ. Press, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... and his chums leagued together to help another boy save a peculiar invention of his father's, a talking frog, from thieving hands,—wait breathlessly in the lonely brick house where the puzzle maker had met with such a strange death. Fun ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... be brought hither by one impulse only,—that is, by the pursuit of amusement. Business may be, and I doubt not is, carried on elsewhere than in the shops, but when or how people find time to attend to it, may well puzzle all save the initiated. I say nothing of the necessity under which every human being appears to be laid, of taking the baths as often as an opportunity may offer; for the bath is to a German what ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... question," Jesson said. "I am like a man with a puzzle board and a heap of loose pieces. Kroten is one of those pieces, but I haven't commenced the fitting-in process yet. Here," he said, "is as much as I can tell you about it. There are three cities, situated in different countries in the world, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of Leyden!" he soliloquized, restraining his impulse while he puzzled the problem out. "That's no mystery; suspense knocked him out when I got here first. That's no puzzle either. But how in thunder did Leyden get so solid with the little lady? ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... "about what they call the 'Sex Problem'. There's no problem, really, except Creation, and that's not our affair; we can't solve it, and we've no right to make a problem out of it for ourselves to puzzle over, and waste the little time that is given us about. It's we that make the problems, not Creation. We make 'em, and they only smother us; they'll smother the world in the end if we don't look out. Anything that can be argued, for and against, from ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... "That's a puzzle to me," answered Jack. "I believe that I had jumped up on the taffrail when the vessel gave a kick, and over I went. I must have sunk, I think, before I knew where I was; and when I came to the surface I instinctively struck out towards the Lively, for I could not see the schooner, as my eyes happened ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... sharply, as a man does who thinks he has caught another man's soul secret. It was only under considerable stress of feeling that such coherence of ideas could have been expressed by his irrelevant friend. What he had learned the last few minutes had been a surprise, a pain, and a puzzle to him. The runaway marriage held more elements than he had imagined. He ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... shrieks of laughter from the coon-can set, he tucked the volume under his arm and slipped out of the room as noiselessly as possible. He could rest at peace up in his "cock loft" and endeavour to puzzle out some means of reaching the land of the Golden Umbrella—even if he worked his passage as a cabin steward. In passing the door of Mrs. Malone's den, some strange, unaccountable impulse constrained him ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... Valentine's exposition of his deeds and of his strange gospel were floating through Cuckoo's mind as fragments of broken wood float by on a stream, fragments of broken wood that were part of a puzzle, that should be rescued by some strong hand from the stream, and fitted ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... transform yourself into such a hideous creature?" I tried to speak but my first effort nearly choked me. Then in a voice which seemed to be unusually coarse I finally blurted out: "My dear lady, will you kindly tell me who or what you are?" These words seemed to puzzle her more than ever and after hurriedly glancing about the room she looked me over carefully from head to foot. Speaking once more I said, "Madame, can you understand my language?" Then I received another strange but unmistakable impression ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... all. Puzzles containing obsolete words will be received. Write contributions on one side of the paper, and apart from all communications. Address "Puzzle Editor," ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... of protection for minors was secured by the combined efforts of mission workers and their friends. This explanation will prepare the way for a rehearsal of some cases of rescue which might puzzle the reader as being carried out by ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... Professor Petrie, who, with his usual keen perception, soon came to the conclusion that the whole tomb was a dummy, built solely to hide an enormous mass of rock chippings the presence of which had been a puzzle for some time. These masons' chippings were evidently the output from some large cutting in the rock, and it became apparent that there must be a great rock tomb in the neighbourhood. Trial trenches ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... placed him in a high position in society, he appeared satisfied with his condition, and aspired to no loftier sphere than that of a common sailor. We often meet with anomalies in the human character, for which it would puzzle the most learned psychologist to account. What strange and sad event had occurred in the early part of that man's career, to change the current of his fortune, and make him contented in a condition so humble, and a slave to habits so degrading? ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... most engaging little baby dimple, was the centre of the party gathered there. The other women were Miss Maitland and Mrs. Winter's twin sister, who reproduced the hair, lips, eyes and dimple with such exactness that it was always a puzzle to me how Winter had managed to make up his mind between them. About them were gathered Colonel Maitland, Mannering, Winter himself, and another man whom he had brought down with him from town that day. The subject ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... with Mary Ellen? Ah, she was enough to puzzle a justice! I was not long, though, in perceiving that this unenlightened maiden felt instinctively that her personal appearance should be attended to a little more carefully than when only David was to admire. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to decide which appeared first, the egg out of which the fowl was hatched, or the hen which laid the egg; and it is an equal puzzle to the anthropologist to say whether man was first brought into existence as a babe or in maturity. In both cases he would be helpless. The babe would need its mother, and the man be paralysed into incapacity through ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... the Cafe [Cafe] de l'Opera, a tumble-down frame shack with a corrugated iron roof, to order a cooling drink and to puzzle out this utterly ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... softly out by another door, we reached a small courtyard in the rear, surrounded on all sides by high walls. Our way, so our guide informed us, lay over one of these. But how we were to surmount them was a puzzle, for the lowest scaling place was at least twelve feet high. However, the business had to be done, and, what was more to the ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... puzzle-map of the World in the House. Lispeth had played with it when she was a child. She unearthed it again, and put it together of evenings, and cried to herself, and tried to imagine where her Englishman was. As she ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... to these are the minds to which, as soon as they become able to think for themselves, all life is a puzzle, and on every side, wherever they turn, they are baffled by unanswerable questions. These questions are often more insistent and more troublesome because they cannot be asked, they have not even taken shape in the mind. But they haunt and perplex ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... assembled On November 14, 1916—new style—the approaching doom of Czar Nicholas II was already manifest. Why the Revolution did not occur at that time is a puzzle not easy to solve. Perhaps the mere fact that the Duma was assembling served to postpone resort to drastic measures. The nation waited for the Duma to lead. It is probable, also, that fear lest revolution prove disastrous to the military forces exercised a ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... I were you," she said hurriedly. "Here in Russia one ought not to puzzle one's head over such things. When you meet the inexplicable, accept it as such and inquire ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... of getting at things—generally more circuitous than now, though he struck on a tangent sufficiently acute momentarily to puzzle Bohun. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... made completely real by imagination are realised for us by the dramatist. Intimations of humanity which in our own minds have lain jumbled fragmentary, like the multitudinous pieces of a shuffled picture-puzzle, are there set orderly before us, so that we see at last the perfect picture. We escape out ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... Raffles Haw, "is a lift, though it is so closely joined to the rest of the room that without the change in colour it might puzzle you to find the division. It is made to run either horizontally or vertically. This line of knobs represents the various rooms. You can see 'Dining,' 'Smoking,' 'Billiard,' 'Library' and so on, upon them. I will show you the upward action. ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sitting-room again, where they fitted as snugly as bits in a puzzle, and she had brewed the coffee, and poured it into her grandmother's egg-shell cups, his eye, as he leaned back, basking in the warm fragrance, lighted on a recent photograph of Miss Bart, and the desired transition ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... 30.—Looking back on all I have seen during the last few days, I find it difficult to piece together the various incidents and impressions and to make one picture. It all seems to me now like a jigsaw puzzle of suffering and fear and courage and death—a litter of odd, disconnected scraps of human agony and of some big, grim scheme which, if one could only get the clue, would give a meaning, I suppose, to all these tears of women and children, to all these hurried movements ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... little fair-haired girl, about seven years old, who was going through some pretence at needlework; and kneeling on a higher chair, while she sprawled over the drawing-room table, was another girl, some three years younger, who was engaged with a puzzle-box. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... puzzle me,' said I. 'But it is an indubitable verity,' I continued, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the form of my asseveration,' that I owe the King of France nothing but my good-will, for he is a very ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... prone to moralize In scientific doubt On certain facts that Nature tries To puzzle us about,— For I am no philosopher Of wise elucidation, But speak of things as they occur, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... sure of that," I replied. "On the contrary, I should recommend you in your present state of mind to look out your old Plato as quickly as possible, and see if he and his master Socrates cannot give you, if not altogether a solution for your puzzle, at least a method whereby you may solve it yourself. But tell me first-What has all this to do with your evident sympathy for a man so unlike ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... or less fruitful as to the interplay of its forces, there is a growing faith that the day is at hand when the tie between electricity and gravitation will be unveiled—when the reason why matter has weight will cease to puzzle the thinker. Who can tell what relief of man's estate may be bound up with the ability to transform any phase of energy into any other without the circuitous methods and serious losses of to-day! In the sphere of economic progress ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... my trade by the dozen and never a trade to know; To plan like a Chinese puzzle—fitting and changing so; To think of a thousand details, each in a thousand ways; For my own immediate people and a possible love ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... in his autobiography expresses strong differences of opinion with Gandhi at many points. In one place he says: "What a problem and a puzzle he has been not only to the British Government but to his own people and his closest associates!... How came we to associate ourselves with Gandhiji politically, and to become, in many instances, his devoted followers?... He attracted people, but ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... same as that which has served for the Venus of the Sacred and Profane Love, though the picture comes some years after that piece. Later still comes the so-called Alfonso d'Este and Laura Dianti, as to which something will be said farther on. Another puzzle is provided by the beautiful "Noli me tangere" of the National Gallery, which must necessarily have its place somewhere here among the early works. Giorgionesque the picture still is, and most ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... read it twice, he turned the sheet over, as people do with letters that puzzle them, in the vain hope of something explanatory on the back. Then he looked up and asked: "What do you suppose he's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... infatuation is what the Scripture styles the judicial hardening the hearts and blinding the eyes of men, who, by their former voluntary wickedness, have justly deserved to be destroyed, and are thereby brought to destruction,] is a very just one, and in him not unfrequent. Nor does Josephus ever puzzle himself, or perplex his readers, with subtle hypotheses as to the manner of such judicial infatuations by God, while the justice of them is generally so obvious. That peculiar manner of the Divine operations, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the whole picture suddenly fell into place. It was clear to Tom now how ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... to crowd everything into view an' make the most of appearances. All the dressed dolls has got their frocks spread out, and the undressed ones their arms an' legs throwed about to make 'em take up as much room as possible. The lids of all the work boxes is open, the slates and puzzle boxes stuck up in single rows, with their broadsides to the front, and the collapsin' worlds is all inflated. Everything in the front is real, but all behind is sham dummies an' ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... of opening the British Museum to respectable people on Sunday, has lately been the subject of some discussion. I think it would puzzle the most austere of the Sunday legislators to assign any valid reason for opposing so sensible a proposition. The Museum contains rich specimens from all the vast museums and repositories of Nature, and rare and curious fragments ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... Chapter I. Domestic Annals. Chapter II. The Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock. Chapter IV. A Family of Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather. VI. Alan Stevenson. VII. Thomas Stevenson. My materials for my great-grandfather are almost null; for my grandfather copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. A Scottish Family, A Family of Engineers, Northern Lights, The Engineers of the Northern Lights: A Family History. Advise; but it will take long. Now, imagine if I have been homesick for Barrahead and Island Glass, and Kirkwall, and Cape Wrath, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... literal sense of the word. Seldom a week went by, but Maud had some weird vision of the night to recount to her friend, the meaning of which they would together try to puzzle out; for it was an article of faith with both that there were meanings to be discovered, and ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... unless you really mean that just now you decline though by-and-by you intend to accept; or unless you mean that you do accept now, though you have no pleasure in doing so, but look forward to be more pleased by-and-by. In fact the sequence of the compound tenses puzzle experienced writers. The best plan is to go back in thought to the time in question and use the tense you would then naturally use. Now in the sentence "I should have liked to have gone to see the circus" ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... trembling so much that I could scarcely follow the music. Truly this man, with his changes from silence to talkativeness, from ironical hardness to cordiality, was a puzzle and a trial ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in his more delicate enterprise, he fails ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... unlikely places—a wary lifting of summer garments laid away, for a peek beneath—a journey on one's stomach under the spare-room bed—a pilgrimage around the cellar with a flaring candle—furtive explorations of the storeroom. And when we came to a door that was locked—Aha! Here was a puzzle and a problem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upside down. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature,—if I read the tale aright,—was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the house before the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... soon teach Chico to ride it. I suspect that it would puzzle even a zebra to kick ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... ambush had came the surprising descent of the earth-borer. The two incidents coincided too well: the same mind had planned them. And two, men, at least, were in on the plot.... It suddenly became very clear to him that the answer to the puzzle lay with the man who had ambushed him. He would have to get that ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... a network of gorges that would puzzle almost anyone, and stopped to water his horse and let him feed for an hour or so. A man's horse meant a good deal to him, down here on such a mission, and even his anxiety could not betray him into letting his mount ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... office, and there with Mr. Fenn despatched the business of Balty's L1500 he received for the contingencies of the fleete, whereof he received about L253 in pieces of eight at a goldsmith's there hard by, which did puzzle me and him to tell; for I could not tell the difference by sight, only by bigness, and that is not always discernible, between a whole and half-piece and quarterpiece. Having received this money I home with Balty and it, and then ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Lebrun hated a puzzle above all things in the world, at least a puzzle which affected ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... unformulated desire, then things are easy for him, and he can discourse with certitude on feminine vagaries, as Rattenden did on the journeyings of Zora Middlemist. He has the word of the enigma. But to the woman herself her state of mind is an exasperating puzzle, and to her friends, philosophic or otherwise, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... had forgotten, although his name had been put forward by the minister Chamillart: this was the celebrated Superintendent of Finance, Nicolas Fouquet. In 1837, Jacob, armed with documents and extracts, once more occupied himself with this Chinese puzzle on which so much ingenuity had been lavished, but of which no one had as yet got all the pieces into their places. Let us see if he succeeded better ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... arise questions which may puzzle the mind of a Hampshire naturalist. You have in this neighbourhood, as you well know, two, or rather three, soils, each carrying its peculiar vegetation. First, you have the clay lying on the chalk, and ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... bearing the name,—River's Cottage. There was a little garden between the road and the house, across which there was a straight path to the door. In front of one window was a small shrub, generally called a puzzle-monkey, and in front of the other was a variegated laurel. There were two small morsels of green turf, and a distant view round the corner of the house of a row of cabbage stumps. If Trevelyan were living there, he had certainly come down ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... Synne is given in Specimens of Early English, Part II, most of which can be read with ease. The obsolete words are not very numerous, and we meet now and then with half a dozen consecutive lines that would puzzle no one. It is needless to pursue the history of this dialect further. It had, by this time, become almost the standard language, differing from Modern English chiefly in date, and consequently in pronunciation. ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat

... mean to flatter. Although in some respects you puzzle me, I am very clear and positive as to my feeling of gratitude. While my aunt feels kindly toward me, she is formal. It seemed to me when I came out of the cold of the wintry night I found within a more chilling coldness. But when you gave me ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... passion instead of accomplishing a mere act of obedience, may enlarge his horizon and dig to whatever depth he sees fit. In this case, study is called research; if, by this method, one loses the benefit of the experience of others, he becomes more quick at discovery. Is not the puzzle which we work out for ourselves more readily remembered than the ideas which are ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... although our own people seemed to doubt this. One of the skippers insisted that she was the Hornet, from the unusual shortness of her lower masts, and the immense squareness of her yards. But the puzzle was, if it were the Hornet, why she did not shorten sail. Still this might be accounted for, by her either wishing to make out what we were before she engaged us, or she might be clearing for action. At this moment a whole cloud of studdingsails were ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... the Senior Fence. "What's the plot, anyhow? It's bad enough when T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., sneaks out, bearing a football, like an amateur cracksman making a getaway; but when you appear, imitating a Nihilist about to hurl a bomb—say, what's the answer to the puzzle, old man?" ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... magistrate. He was sitting after his habit in his splint-bottomed chair tilted against the porch wall, waiting for the breakfast which his wife was getting within. As the crowd straggled up to the porch, he tilted his chair down, and came forward with a frown of puzzle. "What's this?" he demanded; then, catching sight of a woman's eager face among the foremost, his frown relaxed and he said, "Don't all speak at ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... out of sight of any passer-by he went on: 'I am Jasper Pope at your service, Sir Denzil de Foulke's own man, and I have in my basket such a disguise as would puzzle his dearest friend, that of a pedlar's wife. Also there is a packet for you, lady; you will find it at the bottom. I could not see you sooner. I have been selling my wares in the village for a day or two, but durst not ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... live in Tradd Street. If you put their noses together, they'd reach to Legare Street. It runs in the family. Julian Pringle, he died in '70, he was just the same. Now why should a long nose run through a family like that, or a bad temper, or the colour of hair? I don't know. The world's a puzzle and the older one grows, the ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... were vivid in the policeman's mind, and he was wondering how the puzzle would explain itself in the long run, when an exclamation from Bates brought his vagrom speculations sharply back to the problem ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... not) but not retentive, and they can keep up a steady, even pull at regular tasks, especially in routine work, at which American children usually rebel. In fact, they prefer routine work to variety, and grow discouraged quickly when they have to puzzle out things for themselves. They will faithfully memorize pages and pages of matter which they do not understand, a task at which our nervous American children would completely fail. They are exceedingly sensitive to criticism, and respond quickly to praise. Unfortunately the narrow experience ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... You think to puzzle me with your fine phrases; but I'm not to be caught in that way. Just listen to me. Some of your band of black-gowns stole my cross; you returned it to me. Some of the same band carried off these children; ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... shall enjoy it hugely. 'Twill be fine sport to so puzzle the King, and when he sees me as I am—" and Mistress Penwick turned proudly to a ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... expected him to do—to all of which he listened gravely and with an astonishing air of comprehending what was said to him—seemed to enter into the spirit of the situation, and to try his very best to meet its requirements. It is a puzzle to me to this day how El Sabio managed to shrink himself so that we got him through that narrow hole; but he certainly did manage it—and then went down the stone stair-way backward, as though he had been ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... for another, and discussions of the condition of the Ms. Until Wlker's text and the photographic fac-simile of the original Ms. are in the hands of all scholars, it will be better not to introduce such matters in the school room, where they would puzzle without instructing. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... kidnapped the sons of Ham from Africa for lucre; with the "Indians" of South and Central America they were always on excellent terms, and the Californians proffered divine honours to Francis Drake. These are paradoxes precisely similar in kind to those which so often puzzle amiable and mature observers of the British schoolboy to-day. Broadly, they were governed by instincts and impulses rather than by reasoned ethical theory, instincts occasionally barbaric but for the most part frank and generous; and they were sturdily ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... too big a puzzle for me," he answered. "Five minutes ago I would have said three hundred at the utmost, but I don't ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... written to Saint Lambert,[299] but it may be doubted whether Theresa's imagination could have risen to such feat as writing to a marquis, and a marquis in what would have seemed to her to be remote and inaccessible parts of the earth. All this, however, has become ghostly for us; a puzzle that can never be found out, nor be worth finding out. Rousseau was persuaded that Madame d'Epinay was his betrayer, and was seized by one of his blackest and most stormful moods. In reply to an affectionate letter ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... for to puzzle yer brains over it. That pictur' has nearly druv all the thinkin' men o' Cove mad, so we'll let it alone just now. Here's a man-o'-war, ye see; an' this is the steps for mountin' into the four-poster. It serves for a—a—some sort o' man, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... bows of his pudgy little person, and Laverick was left with another puzzle to solve. He was not in the least conceited, and he did not for a moment misinterpret this woman's interest in him. Her invitation, he knew very well, was one which half London would have coveted. ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... MONKEY PUZZLE TREE.—A task lies before you which you will find hard, but for which you will afterwards be rewarded ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... envy of the other guides. But like all men of genius he is modest about his accomplishments. "H'I not spik good h'English—h'only for camp—fishin', cookin', dhe voyage—h'all dhose t'ings." The aspirates puzzle him. He can get though a slash of fallen timber more easily than a sentence full of "this" and "that." Sometimes he expresses his meaning queerly. He was telling me once about his farm, "not far off here, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... seaworthy, has reached the port when the tempest is over." How touching to compare with this passage that in which he records his pride in being found before he left the High School one of the boldest {p.085} and nimblest climbers of "the kittle nine stanes," a passage of difficulty which might puzzle a chamois-hunter of the Alps, its steps, "few and far between," projected high in air from the precipitous black granite of the Castle rock. But climbing and fighting could sometimes be combined, and he ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... It did not puzzle the Colonel at all to know where the sperrit came from, and he did not like the child the less because of it. She was in the room now, scrubbed till her face shone, and her hair, which was curly, lay in rings upon her forehead. Mandy Ann had put on her best ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... said, "to experiment with the affairs of a friend when I am tired of my own. You enjoy yourself. Let me work at the puzzle ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... service at twelve years of age, in the family of the Fantinelli, whose house was close to this church, where now she has a chapel to herself at the west end of the south aisle, with a fine Annunciation of the della Robbia. To think of it!—but in those days it was different; it would puzzle Our Lord to find a S. Zita among our housemaids of to-day. For hear and consider well the virtues of this pearl above price, whose daughters, alas! are so sadly to seek while she dusts the Apostles' chairs ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... reflected by the grandson, was convincing so far as it went. She said that the young man remained behind in the kitchen to puzzle himself over the smoke mystery, while she went out to her doorstep. The man with the horses became frightened when she went down to explain the situation to him. He fled. A few minutes later the gentleman emerged, to find his horse gone, himself deserted. Cursing, he struck off down ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... little talk of this, it was plain that all the town could not be told to say that the fisher was drowned on such a night, and Hodulf would leave naught undone to find the truth of the matter. So the puzzle became greater, and the one thing that was clear was that Grim was in sore danger, ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... seemed a puzzle to the fortune teller. "She had traveled a good deal. Some one was coming across water that she would be glad to see—three people, a fair lady who had had a great deal of trouble, sickness, but was well now. Why they would soon be ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... mysterious message by the little hot-air balloon," Jack announced with a vein of pride in his voice, feeling delighted over having solved the puzzle that had baffled him for ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... part bad news," Captain Archer said. "We shall have ten thousand men here in a short time, and the more of these scoundrels that are gathered together the better, so that we can end it at one blow. If Arabi does but stand there is no doubt as to the result. The thing that would puzzle us would be for him and his troops to march away into Upper Egypt and lead us a long dance there. In this tremendous heat our fellows would not be able to march far, and it would be like a tortoise trying to catch a hare, hunting them all over the country. The more men ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... about with those precious juniors of yours, instead of sticking to cricket and tennis and your books. Here's young Aspinall here, ahead of you, by long chalks, in classics, and getting a break on at tennis that'll puzzle you to pick up unless you wake up. You can do as you like; only don't blame me if you get stuck among ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... Queux, who has been styled "The Master of Mysteries," has here woven one of his most mystifying tales. It is like a Chinese puzzle in its ingenuity, and holds the reader breathless from the first ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... I know of. Come, Chief Inspector, this finessing with me is highly improper on your part—highly improper. And it's also unfair, you know. You shouldn't leave me to puzzle things out for myself like this. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... Such things puzzle her. They seem palpable contradictions. But now let her understand that out of the Assyrian empire split off three separate kingdoms, of which one was called the Assyrian, not empire, but kingdom; there lurks the secret of the error. And to this kingdom of Assyria it was that Sennacherib ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... ancient cloister a covered way of some kind was erected here. Marks can also be seen, in the masonry, which indicate that the building once had three gables. Two of the Norman buttresses of the south nave aisle have very curious terminations, which might well puzzle any observer. They are fireplaces for the use of plumbers. Passing through the Norman doorway at the north-western corner of the Laurel Court, we come into a narrow passage leading to the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... to puzzle her a little, and though she certainly did not like him, there was a sort of strange attraction for her in his voice, appearance and manner. I wonder if men can know what there is in ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... Frisky Squirrel thought that that was the strangest path he had ever seen, for it seemed to lead to nowhere, and why it should have a bar at the top, to keep anyone from going nowhere at all, was more than even his lively mind could puzzle out. ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey

... which Louis had declared him to possess? If so, why had he baited a clumsy trap for me and permitted me to walk out of it untouched? What did they want from me, these people? The thought was utterly confusing. I could find absolutely no explanation. Then, again, another puzzle remained. I remembered Louis' desire, almost command, that I should return to London by this particular train. Had he any reason for it? Was it connected in any way, I wondered, with the presence of ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... these precautions, Lapo seems to have gained the ear of Michelangelo's father, who wrote a scolding letter in his usual puzzle-headed way. Michelangelo replied in a tone of real and ironical humility, which is exceedingly characteristic: "Most revered father, I have received a letter from you to-day, from which I learn that you have been informed by Lapo and Lodovico. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... to boast on, and she's allus worse after a spiritchus visit: parson's paying her one now. Can you tell me, Mr. Carnegie, sir, why parson chooses folk's dinner-time to drop in an' badger 'em about church? Old parson never did." He did not stay to have his puzzle ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... This Latin expression means a fuller; a person who kneads and presses cloth under a stream of water, making it flexible and ridding it of the asperities of weaving. What connection has the subject of this chapter with the fuller of cloth? I may puzzle my head in vain: no acceptable ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... But—dashed funny—I mentioned something about that appalling speech that chap made in that blasphemy case yesterday.... Eh? yes, absolutely frightful, wasn't it?—well, I'm dashed if old Sabre didn't puzzle up his nut in exactly the same old way and say, 'Yes, but I see what he means.' I reminded him and ragged him about it no end. Absolutely the same words and expression. Funny chap ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... plausible, sometimes in a measure sound, but it would defy the skill of the most synthetic genius to co-ordinate the results thus obtained, and combine them in one harmonious whole. They are like pieces of a puzzle, each of which has been symmetrically cut and trimmed, till they lie side by side, un-fitting, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... coming in the column of spelling set by herself, Abel dared not ask her to solve his puzzle; for never did teacher more warmly resent questions which she was unable ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... apparently its praiseworthy and sober subject. The titles of the interludes of Ursus were sometimes Latin, as we have seen, and the poetry frequently Spanish. The Spanish verses written by Ursus were rhymed, as was nearly all the Castilian poetry of that period. This did not puzzle the people. Spanish was then a familiar language; and the English sailors spoke Castilian even as the Roman sailors spoke Carthaginian (see Plautus). Moreover, at a theatrical representation, as at mass, Latin, or any other language unknown to the audience, is by no means a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... departments created by ourselves to facilitate knowledge—reductions of Nature to the scale of our own intelligence. And we must beware of breaking up Nature except for this purpose. Science has so dissected everything, that it becomes a mental difficulty to put the puzzle together again; and we must keep ourselves in practice by constantly thinking of Nature as a whole, if science is not to be spoiled by its own refinements. Evolution being found in so many different sciences, the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... not obliged to explain my actions to every one, am I, Rose?" said the lady. "Children are a sort of a puzzle to me, never having had any of my own; and I don't believe I know how to bring them up. But these of Helen's are ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster



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