What's the difference between mystery and puzzle?

Mystery


Definition:

  • (a.) A profound secret; something wholly unknown, or something kept cautiously concealed, and therefore exciting curiosity or wonder; something which has not been or can not be explained; hence, specifically, that which is beyond human comprehension.
  • (a.) A kind of secret religious celebration, to which none were admitted except those who had been initiated by certain preparatory ceremonies; -- usually plural; as, the Eleusinian mysteries.
  • (a.) The consecrated elements in the eucharist.
  • (a.) Anything artfully made difficult; an enigma.
  • (n.) A trade; a handicraft; hence, any business with which one is usually occupied.
  • (n.) A dramatic representation of a Scriptural subject, often some event in the life of Christ; a dramatic composition of this character; as, the Chester Mysteries, consisting of dramas acted by various craft associations in that city in the early part of the 14th century.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ofcom will conduct research, such as mystery shopping, to assess the transparency of contractual information given to customers by providers at the point of sale".
  • (2) Totò was a legend in the Vesuvian city – a comedian of genius; poignant, mysterious.
  • (3) And that ancient Basque cultural gem – the mysterious language with its odd Xs, Ks and Ts – will be honoured at every turn in a city where it was forbidden by Franco.
  • (4) The etiology of the panvasculitis still remains a mystery.
  • (5) Meeting after meeting during 2011 to try to hammer out agreements about the basic shape of the Egyptian constitution – meetings that always mysteriously collapsed.
  • (6) Director Gareth Edwards , who made Godzilla, introduced a tantalizing concept reel to preview the mysterious film, which is part of a series of films exploring other stories outside of the core Star Wars saga.
  • (7) In EastEnders , the mystery surrounding the identity of Kat's secret squeeze continues amid the grinding of narrative levers and the death rattle of overflogged script-horses.
  • (8) The exact purpose of the complex is a mystery, though it is clearly ancient.
  • (9) Of course, the great British countryside was never as twee as that – a point made forcibly by the second album from mysterious electronic collective Hacker Farm .
  • (10) Askap will also help astronomers investigate one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: dark energy.
  • (11) Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend , has a mysterious hero, John Rokesmith, who turns out to be someone different from the person we were told he was.
  • (12) Where once Gaga was mysterious and her music unavoidable, the mystique has evaporated and the music easy to miss.
  • (13) "How these union bosses get elected, how they raise money, how they disperse money is a complete and utter mystery.
  • (14) Despite extensive research, the aetiology of this infectious disease which affects mainly infants and young children remains mysterious.
  • (15) Death in utero (or immediately following birth) of children of diabetic mothers remains rather mysterious.
  • (16) Now trapped in an occupied city, she takes on a job as a housekeeper to mysterious bachelor Gabriel Ortega.
  • (17) In response to a question from the host, Jake Tapper, about allegations that the Russian ambassador “is a spy”, Rubio said: “It is not a mystery to anyone that virtually every embassy in Washington DC has some intelligence component associated with it.” Fact check: what did Trump's tweets about Obama's 'wiretaps' mean?
  • (18) Since then, his whereabouts have been a mystery, but this week his brother told Associated Press that he had received new and disturbing information from one of the policemen who took Gao away.
  • (19) Yet elsewhere in Syria, the strikes against Isis opened what US officials indicate as an opportunity to strike a mysterious al-Qaida cell in Syria believed to have been in the advanced stages for bomb attacks against US or western targets.
  • (20) How Balls achieves his £1.2bn from a mansion tax is a mystery.

Puzzle


Definition:

  • (v.) Something which perplexes or embarrasses; especially, a toy or a problem contrived for testing ingenuity; also, something exhibiting marvelous skill in making.
  • (v.) The state of being puzzled; perplexity; as, to be in a puzzle.
  • (v. t.) To perplex; to confuse; to embarrass; to put to a stand; to nonplus.
  • (v. t.) To make intricate; to entangle.
  • (v. t.) To solve by ingenuity, as a puzzle; -- followed by out; as, to puzzle out a mystery.
  • (v. i.) To be bewildered, or perplexed.
  • (v. i.) To work, as at a puzzle; as, to puzzle over a problem.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) More evil than Clocky , the alarm clock that rolls away when you reach out to silence it, or the Puzzle Alarm , which makes you complete a simple puzzle before it'll go quiet, the Money Shredding Alarm Clock methodically destroys your cash unless you rouse yourself.
  • (2) Our data and the model developed to interpret them in terms of fluctuations provide an explanation of the puzzling sharp reduction of water order near the chain-ordering phase transition.
  • (3) And David Ngog was a pointless signing too – one which puzzled us all.
  • (4) That's so far from how my mind works that I find it puzzling.
  • (5) This latest one continued developer Revolution Software’s run, sending you on the hunt for a stolen painting with puzzles and a well-worked storyline to hold your attention.
  • (6) Unexplained physical distress, when associated with alexithymia, becomes a diagnostic puzzle leading to prolonged investigation, ineffective treatment, and psychiatric referral.
  • (7) This scheme is used to rationalize previously puzzling data about the enzyme mechanism.
  • (8) With wearable computing just around the corner cracking integration with you, and indeed the organic-body, is critical for Apple and a final piece in the puzzle.
  • (9) Leanne Bowden, a mother of three on her way home on the school run, looks puzzled by the inquiry.
  • (10) The treatment of obesity remains a puzzling challenge because long-term maintenance of weight loss--one of the most suitable goals--is rarely achieved with conventional methods.
  • (11) It includes a reference to Banks's puzzling repeated insistence in media interviews that he "did not come up the river in a cabbage boat".
  • (12) In his letter responding to the resignation, the prime minister calls himself “puzzled and disappointed”.
  • (13) A persistent puzzle in our understanding of hemostasis has been the absence of hemorrhagic symptoms in the majority of patients with Hageman trait, the hereditary deficiency of Hageman factor (factor XII).
  • (14) "What was popular then was the puzzle: such qualities as psychological truth or even atmospheric location were secondary to it.
  • (15) A more pronounced decrease was produced by subjects working on puzzles than those working on mental calculation and by subjects working on easy tasks than those working on difficult tasks when the easy preceded the difficult ones.
  • (16) "We find it puzzling that the Department of Health would want a group that is opposed to abortion and provides no sexual health services on its sexual health forum."
  • (17) This MA lag of at least 2 years is consistent with the MA lag previously found on strategic games and puzzles.
  • (18) The boys attempted to solve two different sets of 10 find-a-word puzzles, one set following exposure to solvable puzzles, and one set following exposure to insolvable puzzles.
  • (19) That’s where blaming government failure fits into his ideological jigsaw puzzle.
  • (20) Some hypotheses about the cause of schizophrenia are based on the puzzling tendency for mental illness to affect the same sex when two close relatives become psychiatrically ill. Sex-concordance rates were examined in 71 schizophrenic probands, who had at least one first-degree relative suffering from the same disorder, in order to test this tendency in a population of recently admitted patients.

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