mystification

mystification
    n 1: confusion resulting from failure to understand [syn:
         {bewilderment}, {obfuscation}, {puzzlement},
         {befuddlement}, {mystification}, {bafflement},
         {bemusement}]
    2: something designed to mystify or bewilder
    3: the activity of obscuring people's understanding, leaving
       them baffled or bewildered [syn: {mystification},
       {obfuscation}]
    

Mystification \Mys`ti*fi*ca"tion\, n. [Cf. F. mystification.]
   The act of mystifying, or the state of being mystied; also,
   something designed to, or that does, mystify.
   [1913 Webster]

         The reply of Pope seems very much as though he had been
         playing off a mystification on his Grace. --De Quincey.
   [1913 Webster]
    

108 Moby Thesaurus words for "mystification":
      Chinese puzzle, amorphousness, anagoge, anagogics, anthroposophy,
      apparent soundness, burial, burying, cabala, cabalism, casuistry,
      circularity, closed, clouding, college of Laputa, concealedness,
      concealment, corruption, covering, covering up, covertness, dark,
      darkening, darkness, deception, disingenuousness, distortion,
      equivocalness, equivocation, esotericism, esoterics, esoterism,
      esotery, evasive reasoning, fallaciousness, fallacy, fog,
      fogginess, fuzziness, hiddenness, hiding, hocus-pocus,
      indeterminateness, indistinctness, insincerity, interment,
      invisibility, jesuitism, jesuitry, masking, misapplication,
      misdirection, misguidance, misinformation, misinstruction,
      misknowledge, misleading, mist, misteaching, mistiness,
      mumbo jumbo, murk, murkiness, mystery, mysticism, obfuscation,
      obscurantism, obscuration, obscurement, obscurity, occultation,
      occultism, opacity, oversubtlety, perplexity, perversion,
      philosophism, plausibility, plausibleness, putting away,
      rationalization, screening, secrecy, secretion, shapelessness,
      sophism, sophistical reasoning, sophistication, sophistry,
      special pleading, speciosity, specious reasoning, speciousness,
      subterfuge, subtlety, symbolics, symbolism, unclarity, unclearness,
      uncommunicativeness, unplainness, vagueness, vicious circle,
      vicious reasoning, why, yoga, yogeeism, yogism