For those who like computer generated puzzles there is the Jigidi website
It’s free and the puzzles come in all sizes. The pieces are always right-side up, so there is some frustration relief. You can also upload your own photos to turn into puzzles. I have quite a few on there under the username “malamutt”. The site moderators are very picky about uploading someone else’s photos without having permission, though.
For math geeks who are also jigsaw fans, Matt Parker recently did a video about how the number of pieces actually in the puzzle do not match the billing:
I think I’ve done the TV one in the OP. I don’t remember any extra duplicate pieces, but I get most of my puzzles used, so probably the original owner already separated them out.
I favor photographs, especially of scenes with both man-made and natural elements (such as a town in a mountain valley). The largest I’ve ever done was 2000 pieces, of hot air balloons.
Actually, I’ve done a couple of other 2000s and 1500s, but since most of mine were used, that one was the first over-thousand I’ve done that had all of the pieces.
I come and go with puzzles. I like doing them and sometimes I’ll let them sit. It really depends on the puzzle and my mood.
Last year the GF was given a 2500 piece one from the 70s if you remember how those looked, all muted colors and such. It was a trees and an open section. We were missing one piece, that really sucked to get to the end to be missing one piece.
I also did a 3000 piece one of the world. I liked that one, but I’m also a map guy so it was a bit easier for me.
I’m in the middle of a Bits and Pieces brand right now. I"m not sure I’m liking the thing as I couldn’t find even half the side pieces so I’m just putting it together.
I kind of like the egg one from the OP. Looks kind of hard but not overly difficult.
When I was a kid we had a game called “Hold Your Horses”. It had four jigsaw puzzles with pictures of horses and cardboard screens each player would use to shield their puzzle from the others. Players would take turns saying “Hold your horses to the right/left/across”, at which time every player would pass a puzzle piece to the player on the right, left, or across the table. First person to complete their puzzle wins.
Huh. Never heard of that.
I got the name of the game wrong:
My wife and I go through spurts of doing puzzles. What I’ve found is that there is a somewhat narrow range of images I like to do. Perhaps I shy away from ones that are TOO challenging - I’ve heard of people who do them upside down! - but I don’t tend to enjoy ones where there are not enough distinctions among the colors/patterns. Especially if the pieces are all generally the same shape. My wife’s and my minds don’t work in a manner that that is enjoyable.
This is an example of a puzzle we found very enjoyable and attractive. This one was surprisingly hard. At the end we had a large number of pieces with just the dark green "leafy: parts which we had to rely on “brute force” to finish. Just trying every remaining piece in every opening.
Part of our enjoyment also depends on the “feel” and thickness of the pieces. How well they fit together.
Finally - I support legislation REQUIRING that all puzzles come with TWO pictures of the completed work. DEFINITELY helps when 2 people are working at the same time.
Our library started a puzzle exchange during Covid. Really convenient/free way to always have puzzles to do.
We had a relatively recent thread about puzzles. Not sure we ever agreed on what to call the innies and outies, and the various standard shapes. (Anyone else call the ones w/ 1 outie and 3 innies “little men”?)
I call the innies “slots” and the outties “tabs”. The ones with two tabs and two slots are “standard pieces”. Three slots and one tabs are “skinny men,” and three tabs with one slot are “fat men.” Then you have “lopsided pieces,” “all ins,” and “all outs.” Random cut puzzles often have “squirrelly pieces.”
I seem to recall a puzzle consisting of a (not too large) number of wooden blocks. Each side of each block had a piece of a puzzle painted/stuck on it - making it a challenge to complete one (or more) of the six possible puzzles.
In the puzzle exchange, I’ve seen all manner of weird puzzles. Some are double sided - which, if the images aren’t greatly different, could drive me crazy. Anther one had something like “extra” pieces - just weird pieces that didn’t fit. Not my cup of ta.
We generally like 1000 piecers, tho 500 can be a nice day’s enjoyment. A friend lent us a set of puzzles ranging from (IIRC) 50 to 300 pieces. They were kinda neat in that you could just start and finish a puzzle in 15-20 minutes or so. Just a different experience from having a big puzzle take up your table for days.
When you work a puzzle, do you do it in short stints, or as a marathon? I am fine with working on a puzzle for a half hour or so, and then stepping away. My wife, however, has a hard time stepping away. When we have a puzzle going, she can stay up way later than I, and there have been times she woke up early and instead of trying to go back to sleep she went to the puzzle.
My wife will sometimes get the puzzle equivalent of “Just-one-more-chapteritis,” too.
Interesting movie, but did you notice that when she was doing a puzzle all the pieces she needed next were right by her hand? I could do them as fast as she did if some PA presorted my pieces.
And the cat can’t get to the pieces.
Decades ago, I got really into jigsaw puzzles for a few years. After a while, I got bored with them, and started doing them face-down. A little more challenging.
Funny that you say that. My wife and I often find ourselves discussing the"mindset" that develops when we are working on a puzzle. BOTH the ability to discern different shapes, but also fine color/pattern distinctions. For us, the enjoyment is lessened if you reduce either one of those 2 factors - either with shapes colors that are too similar.
How do you “see” a puzzle face-down? Do you find your vision becoming more attuned to small differences in tabs/slots? Because if the pieces are too “regular” and the pattern insufficiently varied, I find myself unable to enjoy finding differences in the shapes. Instead, it impresses me as an exercise in “brute force.”
There is a jigsaw puzzle scene in Citizen Kane. It was supposed to have some deep meaning.
I like the 3D puzzles that build up into old timey buildings. Then they are arranged under the Christmas tree to make an old timey village.
I had one 3D puzzle that was missing a piece, so I pasted a bit of paper over the hole & adjacent pieces and used a set of marking pens to make a “pointillism” repair. It came out better than I expected.
Don’t know if anyone’s said already, but it’s a good time to pick up puzzles at thrift stores. Lots of unloaded pandemic puzzles out there, many still in wrappers. That TV one in the OP? I just got that one for 2-3 dollars.
Yes, l like ‘em too
(and thanks for the warning about the extra pieces!)
One of the ones we got from the library had a “recreated” missing piece. Was weird, as the colors didn’t quite look right all the time we were doing the puzzle, but then at one point we realized where it had to go and what someone had done. Really was done well.
Oe of our favorite puzzles has 1 piece that our stupid dog chewed up when aa pup. Maybe I’ll see what I can do the next time I pull it out…
Funny, we also use skinny men and fat men. What you call all in, however, we call starfish… not that it has the right number of arms, but it’s just the name that popped up and then stuck.
I call an innie-innie-outie-outie an “R piece”.
Speaking of the pieces with non-standard arrangements of innies and outies, those can be a lifesaver when you get to the “sky” section at the end (in quotes, because it can be whatever nondescript almost-uniform area the puzzle has): See, because most pieces are the standard shape, the nonstandard ones have to either fit with other nonstandard ones to form multi-piece chunks that follow the standard pattern around the edge, or they form “crystal defects”, with a whole line of nonstandard pieces meandering across the puzzle. So when you’ve gotten everything but the patch of “sky”, first you look for where any defects are in the edge of that patch, and match up the irregular pieces you need to regularize the edge. Then you match up the remaining irregular pieces with each other (for instance, a “skinny man” standing on top of a “fat man”, or an R piece attached to both a “skinny man” and a “fat man”).
You end up with a few smaller patches of sky, and larger chunks to fill in those smaller patches. No need to try to fit everything to everything.