DesertWife loved jigsaw puzzles so I would get her one every Christmas which we would assemble while on break.
One year the puzzle I got her was a astronomic photo of a chunk of northern sky. It had the constellation borders and a few of the brightest stars were labeled but the vast majority of the pieces were black with a few random spots. The picture on the box was not much help because the star labels were too tiny to read.
Our young nephews declared, “That’s impossible!” and I demurred, saying it was merely very difficult. They were quite astonished we finished it in four days.
I think the British one were sold in stores also. Just different customs. My British ones are from long before there was a Web, so I wonder if modern ones have pictures on their web sites. I’ve never seen a catalog of them, alas, so I don’t know if the catalog had the pictures.
I love Jigidi! I don’t have a huge monitor, though, so I usually do puzzles in the 120-240 piece range. Too many more pieces than that, and I just can’t see them properly. Oddly, I’m much slower at the smaller piece puzzles than the mid-range ones.
I can’t imagine doing jigsaw puzzles without looking at the box art. I consider using it an integral part of how one is “supposed” to do puzzles. Not looking at the picture is something I might consider doing after the first time putting it together, when I know how all the pieces connect and redoing it is more a task of remembering than solving, much like how one might play video games with a self-imposed handicap the second time through to make it more interesting. That people actually enjoy doing puzzles without looking at the box art is truly mind-boggling, but then, there are puzzles out there with no picture at all, so clearly there’s a market for it.
I enjoy discovering the image as I go. I am in the midst of a puzzle right now that I have no photo for. (It’s also and old, used puzzle that might be missing some pieces.)
Yes, theoretically you can do any size puzzle with any size screen, but with more pieces you have to zoom out so far that the pieces are difficult to work with. (You can zoom with mouse wheel, as well as the buttons, by the way).
It’s ideal for puzzles with a smaller number of pieces, if you want to spend anywhere from 10 min to an hour solving each puzzle. There are an unlimited number of puzzles, so you can solve smaller ones one after the other to fill in idle moments, if you feel so inclined.
Our library has had a puzzle exchange going, so we’ve been doing probably 1 puzzle a week.
My wife REALLY uses the picture. She’ll pick up a piece, and try to see where it goes in the picture. I tend to get a bunch of similar colored pieces and try to put them together, looking at the box only occasionally.
We had one recently in which all the pieces were the same shape. Very boring.
We did this one recently. We really like Morris fabircs, and have a tablecloth w/ this same pattern. It was BRUTAL. And after, neither of us like our tablecloth as much!
I’ve never understood how someone can enjoy doing them upside down. A completely different activity than I enjoy.
Some puzzles almost seem made to be done upside down, and I don’t mean the double sided puzzles with pictures on both sides. (I have a Lord of the Rings one from the '60s or '70s like that.) A Chinese puzzle of space images (no idea of what the title or publisher is, since the entire box was in Chinese) was like that. Sections of the underside had letters corresponding to the section of the puzzle they came from. I did one upside down like that once.
It is more a do once for the challenge kind of thing. Back in college I did one in order - starting from the lower left corner and putting in pieces sequentially - first the lower border, then the first row, then the second etc. etc.
Not any more - I have too many puzzles and not enough years left.
It is always funny when you think you do something at a relatively high level, and then you pull back a curtain and see people doing the same thing at some level you can’t even comprehend.
I encounter that all the time. I wonder if there is ANYTHING I do at that highest level? Don’t think there is.
The puzzle I’ve been working on is very hard. It’s old, and the colors are faded and muted. The shapes are weird, and often cut along color lines. I sometimes turned the pieces over to see which way the grain (or the wood) went. I considered it cheating, but did it anyway.
I used to be on the on-line puzzle place, and they would have challenges - you’d get rankings and move up in status if you could do them quick. Let’s say I could do a puzzle in 90 seconds. Not bad, you say? The top rankings were stuffed with people doing the puzzle in 2 seconds! It’s not sour grapes that I’m not in the same league - there’s no way anyone can physically do it that quickly. But yet, there they were. Must have got some cheat program. But why? You didn’t really get anything for it, and I can’t believe anyone actually thought they were doing it that fast. (Maybe they did believe…?)
I’m not sure what people get out of doing that. I used to do a Microsoft Solitaire app, which included tournaments. The winners were impossibly fast - I suspect they recorded the solution and then entered as another user making exactly the right moves instantly.
Studying that, it wouldn’t be as hard as it looks.
All the curves have different radii, so you can treat each arc as if it is an edge. All the same radius have to be at the same level. Then the straight pieces are a lot fewer and are like sky in a regular puzzle.
If a single color puzzle was cut “normally”, it would be all trial and error with each piece. I’m sure they exist, though.
I hate you! I had an entire day set aside yesterday to finally sort through/file/dispose of paperwork from last year… then I lost about three hours to an utterly adorable puzzle of a baby tiger peeking out from between his mother’s forelegs.
Does this site have a timer that will forcibly kick you out after a designated amount of time?
