puzzle vs tell

puzzle

verb
  • To perplex, confuse, or mystify; to cause (someone) to be faced with a mystery, without answers or an explanation. 

  • To think long and carefully, in bewilderment. 

  • To make intricate; to entangle. 

noun
  • Anything that is difficult to understand or make sense of. 

  • A riddle. 

  • The state of being puzzled; perplexity. 

  • A game for one or more people that is more or less difficult to work out or complete. 

  • A jigsaw puzzle. 

  • A crossword puzzle. 

tell

verb
  • To discern, notice, identify or distinguish. 

  • To order; to direct, to say to someone. 

  • To instruct or inform. 

  • To narrate. 

  • To reveal. 

  • To convey by speech; to say. 

  • To reveal information in prose through outright expository statement -- contrasted with show 

  • To count, reckon, or enumerate. 

  • To have an effect, especially a noticeable one; to be apparent, to be demonstrated. 

  • To inform someone in authority about a wrongdoing. 

  • To be revealed. 

  • To use (beads or similar objects) as an aid to prayer. 

noun
  • A private message to an individual in a chat room; a whisper. 

  • A hill or mound, originally and especially in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements. 

  • A reflexive, often habitual behavior, especially one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (such as a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold. 

How often have the words puzzle and tell occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )