Verb for "piece together clues"?
Solution 1:
The canonical work of detective reasoning, The Complete Sherlock Holmes uses:
- reason 71 times (although not necessarily all as a verb)
- deduce 19 times
- solve — 16
- puzzle — 12 (puzzle out — 6)
- unravel — 5
- infer — 4
- sleuth — 1
- decipher — 1
- ratiocinate — 0
Solution 2:
I might go with something like "deduce".
Solution 3:
You might try sleuth:
sleuth (verb) : To act as a detective; to try to discover who committed a crime.