The last 2000 piece puzzle I did was clearly a 1000-piece die used twice, on the two halves of the puzzle. And it wasn’t a single roller, because the spacing between the two dies was a little off (resulting in a line of skinnier-than-normal pieces right down the middle).
I like small puzzles that I can finish in a day or two. 350 pieces is about right.
I’ve never had the table space to keep a puzzle out for several weeks or months.
The time to do a puzzle is roughly p**2, where p is the number of pieces. So you can do your puzzle in one ninth the time as a 1,000 piece one. Of course it depends on the puzzle, with some puzzles having sub blocks that you can do quickly, reducing the total time.
The one I’m doing now for the library is a Christmas Tree with a 12 days of Christmas theme, but each is represented by a tiny chunk of puzzle, scattered in branches. And with an irregular frame, of course. A real pain.
I have been doing 500 - 1500 jigsaw puzzles at work for the past 8 or more years.
One of my coworkers is my jigsaw accomplice and we have probably done hundreds at this point.
We set it up on a big piece of cardboard in the conference room and can stash it away if we need the space for meetings. Great stress buster.
I don’t think I would want to do this at home for some reason.
I do puzzles online at jigidi.com. It tracks how many puzzles, and how many total pieces you’ve done. I’m on track to crack 1,000,000 by the end of the year; although I’m not sure if that’s something to brag about.
Why not? Mine is set up on a coffee table in front of the TV, and I do them while watching. The only problem is when I’m watching shows on MHz with subtitles.
I now have a book where I write down the puzzles I’ve finished with size and date.
Damn. That looks interesting. Lots of small puzzles.
I do the Microsoft Jigsaw app on my pc, which has three daily challenges per day. In the first you have to put a certain number of pieces in with a limit on how many mistakes you make. In the second you have to trap a little bug that runs around the inside of the puzzle by assembling piece. In the third you have to finish two or three puzzles in a given time, with the pieces given to you one by one.
There is also puzzle sets you can “buy” but you can get enough fake money from doing the daily challenges that you don’t have to spend real money.
I might try it at home once I retire next year.
I don’t have a working tv so I would probably put it on the dining room table while I glance over at the computer lol.
Right now all my work items and other assorted living debris takes up some of the dining room space.
I am planning on moving to an apartment at some point before I retire which opens up other options.
I do love puzzles!
My mother, her mother and her mother’s mother did jigsaws. While I did many as a kid nowadays I’m more a fan of crosswords and sudoku.
But FtGKid1 does jigsaws and more. E.g., we gave them a Lego globe for their birthday a couple months ago and that was a big hit.
The grandkid (age just under 4 now) is also a fan. Was even doing the phone app versions at age two. A couple weeks we did three puzzles together. A nice quote: “I love doing puzzles.”
Best puzzle brands?
Ravensburger puzzles are obviously top-quality. I like Educa, Heye, Jumbo, and Clementoni. Anatolian and Trefl are also ok.
No experience with Castorland but they are supposed to be decent puzzles.
New York Puzzle Co and Springbok are fine for 1000 piece puzzles.
Eurographics all right, but lots of false fits.
Avoid Tomax and Kodak.
I wish they’d come up with something besides seaside (with gulls), mountains (with church or cottage), lighthouses, hot-air balloons, multi-animal jungle scenes, the same few artworks, the same few world city landmarks, horses, anything resembling or actual Thomas Kinkade, pop culture tripe and nostalgia collages.
Go visit a thrift store with a good puzzle collection. I just came back from my favorite one with four. One is a Eurographics puzzle of a bookstore (I’ve done a few of them and they are good quality.) Two are Dowdle puzzles, one of the Wizard of Oz and one of the Napa Valley, and one is a puzzle of Jewish food. One was $1.99, the others were $1.49.
Dunno what’s on the market today, but when i was a kid, Spingbok was by far my favorite brand. Nice cleanly cut pieces and all interesting shapes. I still have some vintage Springbok puzzles.
Checking my closet for completed puzzles, I have plenty of those, but also a mountain brook with snow on the banks, an underwater scene with tropical fish and coral, a couple of rustic shops, and a train pulling in to a station. I also remember doing a bunch of balls of yarn, knitting needles, etc., a box of chocolates, an abstract fractal pattern, and a couple that came with a mystery story, and the completed puzzle was a crime scene with critical clues in it.
Yeah, they became a lot less interesting when Hallmark bought them. I knew my wife and I were suited for each other when I found that her parents had a stash of old Springbok puzzles in the closet. I pre-inherited them. They don’t get donated.
1,000,008
It’s kinda scary. I know I’ve had more than a million heartbeats, for example, but it’s rather humbling to know that I’ve done one million conscious, thoughtful, deliberate acts assembling puzzle pieces. It’s also proof that I have way, way too much time on my hands.
Well, that depends, how many hands do you have? I mean, the usual is one per arm, but who knows, for a robot?
Hey, has anyone bought a custom puzzle (you provided the art) that you loved? A friend is looking to make some puzzles from a photo of quilts she made. She needs excellent color rendition, and wants the puzzle to feel nice, with pieces that fit crisply. And she’s looking for a puzzle that’s 500-700 pieces for comfortable under $100.
My daughter gave me one from a photo I took of the crater in Death Valley. It was well made. I glued it and framed it and have it hanging in my living room. I think it was well under $100.
I think the pixels.com site I mentioned above has a place to let you make puzzles from submitted artwork, with a few piece count options and I’m pretty sure for less than $100. Warning though - I think I found some deepfakes in their collection of submitted art and photographs.
Do you know where your daughter got it? Did you like the quality of the image?
I know if lots of places that will make a cardboard puzzle, but I’m specifically looking for places that folks have experience with and did a good job in two dimensions:
- good print quality
- pieces feel nice
(Also, it doesn’t bother me if they are willing to print a puzzle of a “deepfake”. But it does bother me if they are faking photos of what they can do. Which are you saying?)
Is there a makerspace near you with both a large-format printer, and a laser cutter?