1
as in inexplicable
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2
as in perplexing
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Dissimilar Words
as in baffling
to throw into a state of mental uncertainty
it is the cause of the disease that puzzles doctors
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of puzzling
Scott Phillips, New York Times, 30 Sep. 2025
Fan interactions are inevitable for a star like Leonardo DiCaprio, the former heartthrob turned permanent Hollywood A-lister, but some are more puzzling than others.
—Matt Donnelly, Variety, 26 Sep. 2025
Literary Hub, 18 Dec. 2025
What, if anything, does all this puzzling tell us about Sondheim’s musicals?
—Michael Schulman, New Yorker, 15 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for puzzling
Adjective
Another puzzling result dipped the Green Bay Packers to +750, good for third in the odds.
—Verb
Her views, expressed online, were puzzling to me at first.
—Recent Examples of Synonyms for puzzling
Adjective
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So the choice to focus this one on a makeover for Margaret, a character two levels removed from the plot, is particularly inexplicable.—
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The network put the kibosh on this story for inexplicable reasons.—
Adjective
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The movie is hilarious, fun, disturbing, perplexing, exuberant, exhausting.—
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The canon can already be described as a bewildering artistic menagerie, including a perplexing assessment of misandrism, body horror by Brian Yuzna, killer toys from the ’90s, and more.—
Verb
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The pilot of a private jet reportedly made an eerie discovery while flying thousands of feet over Rhode Island, marking the latest in unexplained encounters baffling both experts and civilians alike.—
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From financial wipeouts to baffling misreads of beloved source material, some of Hollywood’s most notorious flops began as video games.—
Adjective
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Not to mention the titular bugs, a swarm of blood-invading creatures discovered by her new lover, the mysterious drifter Peter Evans (Namir Smallwood).—
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The Columbus, Ohio, police chief is speaking out for the first time since the mysterious murders of dentist Spencer Tepe and his wife, Monique Tepe.—
Adjective
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What is the most confounding and terrible, however, is Gretchen’s assertion that Slade, the anti-Viagra, doesn’t get involved with the women on his own accord, but only engages because the women always talk about him.—
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The offense’s struggles are the most confounding.—
Verb
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And aren’t our real-life romantic complications bewildering enough?—
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Its ginormous investments in higher-value, tech-heavy sectors from smartphones to autos to semiconductors to biotechnology are disrupting the global landscape at bewildering speed.—
Adjective
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The scope of the effort is almost incomprehensible, both for its sheer size and persistence on a low-lying peninsula, where the delineation between land and sea has always been somewhat unclear and is becoming less so.—
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In these cases, the equations will predict a fluid moving in some unphysical, incomprehensible way — spinning into an impossibly fast vortex, for instance, or instantly reversing its flow.—
Adjective
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His work is marked by unusual, even bizarre, material choices that encrust spatial compositions reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s innovative open space plans.—
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Some unnamed Chicago bartender in the early 1880s had the improbable idea of taking a Whiskey Sour and adding a little red wine to the top, inventing in a bizarre flash of insightone of the great warm weather whiskey drinks of our time.—
Cite this Entry
“Puzzling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/puzzling. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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