puzzle over

verb

puzzled over; puzzling over; puzzles over

: to think or worry for a long time about (something)

He's been puzzling over what went wrong.

Examples of puzzle over in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Staffers for major political figures have puzzled over the content, and are growing concerned about the rise of a new wave of videos with errors, exaggerations, misleading comments, and a tone that can be downright weird. — Max Tani, semafor.com, 2 Sep. 2026

Sehila Mota Casper had spent years puzzling over that absence. — Harry Bruinius, Christian Science Monitor, 1 Sep. 2026

Symmetries Over Substance Since the 1960s, physicists had been puzzling over a common property of metals. — Charlie Wood, Quanta Magazine, 17 Aug. 2026

Breeders selecting for aroma formulators trying to replicate a strain’s signature profile, and product developers puzzling over why two batches of the same cultivar smell different, were all missing a variable nobody knew existed. — Peter Su, Forbes.com, 10 Aug. 2026

Rhymes for puzzle over

• carryover
• changeover
• crossover
• cutover
• flashover
• hangover
• holdover
• layover
• leftover
• makeover
• moreover
• passover