Puzzle piece

A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, or logic puzzles.

Puzzles are often created to be a form of entertainment but they can also arise from serious mathematical or logistical problems. In such cases, their solution may be a significant contribution to mathematical research.

The 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary dates the word puzzle (as a verb) to the end of the 16th century. Its first documented use (to describe a new type of game) was in a book titled The Voyage of Robert Dudley...to the West Indies, 1594–95, narrated by Capt. Wyatt, by himself, and by Abram Kendall, master (published circa 1595). The word later came to be used as a noun.

The word puzzle comes from pusle, meaning "bewilder, confound", which is a frequentive of the obsolete verb pose (from Medieval French aposer) in the sense of "perplex". The use of the word to mean "a toy contrived to test one's ingenuity" is relatively recent (within mid-19th century).

Puzzles can be divided into categories. For example, a maze is a type of tour puzzle. Some other categories are construction puzzles, stick puzzles, tiling puzzles, transport puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, lock puzzles, folding puzzles, combination puzzles, and mechanical puzzles.

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