Puzzle

A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity.

Quotes

We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle.
- Joko Beck in: Charlotte J. Beck Everyday Zen, HarperCollins, 6 October 2009, p. 12

Writing is sort of putting a puzzle together halfway. Then, performing it has always been the completion of it. Once that happens, I'm feeling verbally communal with other people. It's out there and I feel so much better about it.
- Brandi Carlile in: Paul Freeman A passion for helping people, San Jose Mercury News, 15 August 2012

There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.
- Deepak Chopra in: J. T. Linda, Linda J T Oceans of Wisdom, BalboaPress, 25 April 2013, p. 91

Mysteries do not lose their poetry when solved. Quite the contrary; the solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle and, in any case, when you have solved one mystery you uncover others, perhaps to inspire greater poetry.
- Richard Dawkins in:Mind and the Frontal Lobes: Cognition, Behavior, and Brain Imaging, Oxford University Press, 5 January 2012, p. 274

"Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician."
- Arthur Conan Doyle, in The Sign of Four (1890), Ch. 10, p. 137; this actually differs from Reade's remarks in his The Martyrdom of Man (1872), where he states: "As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem."

Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.
- Hans Hofmann in:Reel Success: Creating Demo Reels and Animation Portfolios, Taylor & Francis, 6 August 2013, p. 19

Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution.
- Karl Kraus, Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.
- Stanley Kubrick, as quoted in Kubrick : Inside a Film Artist's Maze (2000) by Thomas Allen Nelson, p. 10

We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man.
- Richard Leakey in: Peter Chrisp et al, History Year by Year, DK India, p. 8

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
- Don Marquis, in archy and mehitabel (1927)

Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.
- Maria Goeppert Mayer in: Russell L. Herman A Course in Mathematical Methods for Physicists, CRC Press, 4 December 2013, p. 53

The world's a puzzle; no need to make sense out of it.
- Dan Millman in:Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives, H J Kramer, 2006, p. 9

Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I've played the game for 40 years and I still haven't the slightest idea how to play.
- Gary Player in: Jim Apfelbaum The Gigantic Book of Golf Quotations: Thousands of Notable Quotables from Tommy Armour to Fuzzy Zoeller, Skyhorse Publishing Inc., 2007, p. 26

The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
- Stephen Sondheim in: Rebecca Swanner Best You Ever: 365 Ways to be Richer, Happier, Thinner, Smarter, Younger, Sexier, and More Relaxed - Each and Every Day, Adams Media, 18 October 2010, p. 353

When I studied graphic design, I learned a valuable lesson: There's no perfect answer to the puzzle, and creativity is a renewable resource.
- Biz Stone in: Melissa Korn and Amir Efrati Master of 'Biz' Returns to School, The wall Street Journal, 1 September 2011

I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all.
- Jeannette Walls in: Jeannette Wall Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, Simon and Schuster, 6 October 2009, p. 34

Veronica solves little puzzles because she, like all of us, cannot unravel the bigger ones.
- Joss Whedon Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season Reviewed by Joss Whedon[1]

Tell the truth so as to puzzle and confound your adversaries.
- Henry Wotton in: Edward Fiske et al., Fiske WordPower: The Exclusive System to Learn, Not Just Memorize, Essential Words, Sourcebooks, Inc., 1 June 2006, p. 122