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

Thursday is The New York Times’s favorite day of the week to publish crosswords with twists, surprises or extra layers of trickery to puzzle over. — Sean McGowan, New York Times, 1 Oct. 2026

Today, visitors can puzzle over a flat road called Mound Street in a square city called Circleville. — Daniel Immerwahr, New Yorker, 28 Sep. 2026

The second mystery is the puzzle over how exactly type Ia supernova explosions detonate. — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 11 Sep. 2026

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

Rhymes for puzzle over

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