Chinese puzzle

Chinese puzzle

1. A puzzle game consisting of intricate and complex pieces that fit together in a specific manner, especially of multiple boxes that fit inside one another. My uncle gave me this Chinese puzzle for Christmas, and I still haven't been able to solve it!
2. Any problem, question, or situation that is especially complex or difficult to understand. Dealing with growing income inequality is truly a Chinese puzzle for lawmakers today. I can't understand a thing about how this engine works, it's like a dang Chinese puzzle!
See also: Chinese, puzzle
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • puzzle
  • fit in with (someone or something)
  • serve the purpose
  • You cannot get a quart into a pint pot
  • you can't get a quart into a pint pot
  • serve a purpose
  • give (someone) a fit
  • give someone a fit
  • fiddle
  • fit out
References in periodicals archive
Ask others and they will say they love the Black woman's inner temperament--fragile and pretty like a china teacup one minute and hard and complex like a Chinese puzzle the next.
She eventually returned to India and wrote several books, beginning with Chinese Puzzle (1936).
Now take a hundred bedrooms, a hundred board rooms, a hundred back rooms, mazily interconnected to form an immense Chinese puzzle; and include in that puzzle a hundred identifiable and uncounted unidentifiable souls coming together and dispersing in endlessly shifting, furtive groups.
If you do not leave the capital on Sunday to get on the highway and go where the waves of the beach call and the sand is always ready to get between your toes, then you could watch the 2013 French and English romantic comedy Casse-tete Chinois (Chinese Puzzle) starring Romain Duris, Audrey Tautour and Cecile De France.
Eleven years after his Franglais smash "L'auberge espagnole" and eight years after sequel "Russian Dolls," French writer-helmer Cedric Klapisch follows up with the zesty "Chinese Puzzle," a New York-set comedy that serves as a seductive advertisement for modern urban living.
Everyone loves a puzzle, except when they are in the form of a Chinese puzzle box which brings forth the Cenobites, a trio of S&M demons to rip you to shreds and take you to hell.
Each house can accommodate up to four people and is divided in sets of zones that fit together with the fiendish precision of a Chinese puzzle box.
Henry Cecil's juvenile CHINESE PUZZLE was thought to be a bit special and started favourite on his last run.
It's a mythical piece involving a Chinese puzzle and flesh-eating demons called Cenobites (1987) ***
Results/comments/faults: The downside is it's like trying to work out a Chinese puzzle to put on.
Unravelling this Chinese puzzle just isn't worth the effort.
The various modular elements of the terminal piers--gate boxes which can be locked together in series for larger passenger volumes, flexible combinations of fixed bridges to serve large or small planes, and slot-in elements housed in separately articulated zones for vertical and horizontal circulation and ducts--are demonstrated in a wooden model which operates as smoothly as an interlocking Chinese puzzle. The Beetle convinced an expert jury of architects, engineers, Lufthansa, Fraport administrators and national politicians, because it allows uninterrupted use of the airport during any future building modifications.
Helmet keeps heat on throughout, and viewers who don't cotton to the Chinese puzzle aspect of the tale will still respond to startling images from resourceful lenser Scott Kevan, who fashions iconic silhouettes and hallucinogenic, brightly colored dreamscapes out of what could have been bleak northern settings.
Henry Cecil was another trainer to make use of the Al Bahathri, and Camacho (Paul Hegarty) stood out among his workmates when bursting clear of Chinese Puzzle (Frank Conlon) over six furlongs.
ALEX NYARKO must solve his Chinese puzzle by tomorrow if Everton are to continue their pursuit of Steve McManaman.