When I was twelve, I attended a party being held in a church basement. Five tables were set up in a row and each table had a brand new 500-piece jigsaw puzzle sitting in the middle of it. The adult in charge of the party divided us into 5 equal groups and on a signal, we were to open the boxes and try to fit as many of the pieces together as possible in 30 minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes, the group with the fewest left over pieces won.
We had a wonderful time. Some groups had a strategy and appointed one person to search for edge pieces, another for blue pieces, another for brown, etc., while one or two actually started working on putting the pieces together. Other groups were totally disorganized, calling out "Hey, I found a piece that looks like it belongs at the top," or "No fair, I wanted to work on the blue."
I don't remember what group won---it wasn't mine, but I do know that my love for working jigsaw puzzles was born at that party.
Jigsaw puzzles have been around for a long time. Most historians give a London mapmaker, John Spilsbury, credit for coming up with the concept around 1760 when he glued one of his maps on a piece of wood and cut it into pieces as a teaching tool in a geography class. Fellow teachers saw merit in the tool and requested similar puzzles so Spilsbury began to turn them out on a regular basis. His puzzle designs were limited to maps though, and it took several years before other puzzle makers started putting a variety of pictures on the wood before using a jigsaw to cut the pieces apart. Still, the process was slow and fairly expensive.
As the demand for jigsaw puzzles became greater, puzzle makers found ways to create large numbers of them at a time and to use cardboard rather than wood for the base. Today, commercial puzzles ranging from 25 pieces to 2500 pieces can be purchased for very nominal fees. Custom made puzzles are, and will continue to be, very expensive, but much in demand by puzzle working and puzzle collecting enthusiasts.
A friend of mine particularly likes Thomas Kinkade jigsaws with designs copied from his famous "light" paintings. Many of his puzzles also have unusually shaped pieces scattered throughout the puzzle. One of his puzzles I worked had about 25 little animal shaped pieces to fit into the design.
Three dimensional puzzles are also popular. My husband gave me a three-dimensional wooden puzzle cat is about 5 inches high and a beautiful decoration for your home, if it is put together. The same man, (actually I only have one), I also bought a three-dimensional puzzle of two-story house. I think that half of the pieces were almost identical, and after pulling my hair out trying to work for a few months, I finally got it together. I'm sure some of the pieces were in the wrong place,but I decided I had had enough and called it done. I asked my husband to please stick to flat puzzles for me in the future.
There are competing puzzle makers who claim to have created the world's largest, the world's smallest, the world's most unusual, and the world's most difficult puzzles. In some cases, the Guinness Book of Records agrees with these claims, but others are not so easy to prove.
Probably the greatest controversy is over the world's largest jigsaw puzzle. There are reports that a wooden puzzle weighing over 3.5 tons was once constructed in France, but my attempts to find evidence of its existence have failed.
In 2008, a claim was made and substantiated that a puzzle with over a million pieces had been put together in Ravensburg, Germany. 15,000 people took part in putting the puzzle together. Jigsaw puzzle purists, however, argue that the puzzle was actually made up of many, many smaller puzzles, put together in individual homes and carried to the town square where they were eventually pieced together to make a whole.
Probably the most recognized contender for the title of the world's largest jigsaw puzzle is a puzzle called, Life, made by Royce B. McClure. The puzzle has over 24,000 pieces and takes several months to complete. When finished, the puzzle measures 168 x 61 inches so you are going to need a big room if you plan to try it. As you have probably guessed, this puzzle isn't cheap so be prepared to invest between $250 and $350 depending on where you buy it. Real jigsaw puzzle lovers can easily justify the cost by looking at the size of the puzzle, the many, many hours of pleasure its construction will give them, and the pride they will have when they do put the last of those 24,000 pieces in place.
If you happen not to have ever put a jigsaw puzzle together, maybe now is a good time to start. The dire predictions concerning our economy should have us thinking about some low-cost activities the members of our family can do together. Maybe jigsaw puzzles, (not the expensive one described above), with their endless variety of pictures is just what your family needs. Once started on an unused table, you'll be surprised how often a child, or even you will stop by thinking of just adding a piece or two but end up still at it 20 or 30 minutes later. When that happens, you know you're hooked!
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