Puzzle Maniac

One night last week the kids were getting in our hair, and I just couldn’t take one more “I’m bored”. For some unknown reason I thought it would be good to do something I haven’t done for MANY years – a jigsaw puzzle. Yep, I have reached the height of excitement. I was either channeling my inner old folks home, or grasping for any way to make this winter go away faster.

We had this 750 piece Chicago Skyline puzzle from Buffalo Games gathering dust on the shelf. My grandma gave it to me at least 5 years ago. The minute I cracked it open, we had instant family entertainment. Mason and Anna have never seen such a large and complex puzzle, and of course Tricia and I were eager to dig in. We spread out all of the pieces and flipped them over. We did an initial sort, looking for all of the edges. By the end of the first night we had the edges somewhat constructed, and Tricia completed all of the lettering at the bottom.

Over the next 10 days the puzzle quickly lost its luster for the rest of the family, but not for me. I was hooked. I attacked this thing every morning before breakfast, and during lunch, and instead of watching TV at night. The whole experience was so much more stimulating and calming than I ever remember it. I’m convinced that the old school jigsaw puzzle is every bit as useful to the brain as BrainAge could ever try to be. As I built the puzzle I kept building different strategies for organizing and completing the different sections.

Tonight, at 1am when I can’t sleep on the eve of our family vacation, I completed the beast. When it was done, I could only wonder if there were puzzling strategies out there from world champs of puzzling or something. Without knowing it, I had in fact followed the strategies that puzzle junkies who do this all the time devised. Building a puzzle has some intrinsic satisfaction for the builder in me. It was as much fun as a home improvement project or building a website.

To top this off, let’s visit our friend YouTube for some jigsaw inspiration.