puzzle box

plural puzzle boxes · alternative puzzle-box

1. A box that cannot be opened by the usual obvious means, and therefore challenges a person to find the correct way to open it.

   "Jest like the Injian puzzle-boxes, ain't they?" said Dan, as the one boat dropped into the other.

   1896 November – 1897 May, Rudyard Kipling, “Captains Courageous”, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, published 1897, →OCLC

   1 more example

   They walked about this town and found their own house, just as before, and went in, and there was the toy town on the floor; and you will see that they might have walked into that town also, but they saw that it was no good, and that they couldn’t get out that way, but would only get deeper and deeper into a nest of towns in libraries in houses in towns in libraries in houses in towns in … and so on for always—something like Chinese puzzle-boxes multiplied by millions and millions for ever and ever.

   1901, E. Nesbit, “The Town in the Library, in the Town in the Library”, in Nine Unlikely Tales

2. A similar device or cage that can be opened by means of levers, latches, etc., used to test the learning behaviour of animals.

   That’s where Osvath’s ravens come in. His student Can Kabadayi trained the birds to open a baited puzzle box by putting a stone of particular weight and shape into a tube.

   2017 July 13, Ed Yong, “Ravens Can Plan for the Future”, in The Atlantic

3. figurativelySomething that is puzzling; an enigma; (narratology, also attributive) a complex story that is gradually revealed, often driven by a central myth.

   puzzle box show

   4 more examples

   puzzle-box plot

   Now the band has released its most po-mo puzzle box of anguish yet. Stickles has described The Most Lamentable Tragedy as a rock opera and has annotated the lyrics at Genius.com; judging by the band’s Twitter feed, which is filled with retweeted praise, the ambition has gone over quite well with its biggest fans.

   2015 July 31, Spencer Kornhaber, “Titus Andronicus and the Joy of Angst”, in The Atlantic

   The movie’s narrative structure, which moves both forward and backwards, is a puzzle box that hard-core Nolan fans will probably enjoy taking apart and putting back together, but it may be excessively inscrutable for a lot of viewers.

   2020 September 2, David Sims, “I Want to Watch ‘Tenet’ Again. Unfortunately.”, in The Atlantic

   But Memento is one of his finest efforts, a brilliant film that reveals new layers on every rewatch thanks to its puzzle-box plot structure.

   2021 August 6, David Sims, “Revisiting the Best Films of 2001”, in The Atlantic

4. literallyA box containing a jigsaw puzzle.

   The world is the geologist's great puzzle-box; he stands before it like the child to whom the separate pieces of his puzzle remain a mystery till he detects their relation and sees where they fit, and then his fragments grow at once into a connected picture beneath his hand.

   1863 March 28, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 11, number 65