Where Are The Puzzle People?

That is an awesome puzzle sorter! Probably going on my wish list soon!

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Ah, cats and jigsaws. Our cat enjoyed assisting by laying on top of whatever part of the puzzle I was working on, and knocking pieces off the table. Good memories.

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Oh! My kids love those as well. Makes doing them with something to figure out in the end feel like you’ve won a prize. And I got my kid a puzzle advent calendar to do at school which she loved. She likes having smaller puzzles at school that she can work on when she needs to de-stress and unplug.

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I also like all the little characters and stories that you encounter along the way, while doing the puzzle! “Why are these people doing this strange thing? What’s the difference between these people and those people? Where are those people going?” etc.

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I wouldn’t normally consider a framed puzzle to be part of my home decor but as I said, long story behind maybe doing that for this puzzle! We will see if I even get to that point…. :wink:

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I love puzzles. Right now I’m really into old 3D jigsaw puzzles. It’s a different strategy entirely to complete them than the 2D ones.

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SInce I know that a lot of us are cat lovers and book lovers, here’s a puzzle I really like. A lot of fun, not too challenging. (Although I tend to gravitate to these types of puzzles that are comprised of a lot of mini-puzzles anyway).

Amazon.com: Re-Marks Feline Tales 1000-Piece Puzzle for All Ages, Cat Books Jigsaw Puzzle, Family Puzzle : Toys & Games

I like puzzles! I need to get a quilt top finished so I have the card table back to start another. My usual themes are Disney (Thomas Kinkade), cats, National Parks. 500-1000 piece are best. I usually let a finished one sit for a day or two, then put it away, and if I liked it enough, do it again another time. I have glued several together, but anymore only one hangs on the wall.

Funny story about losing pieces- when DD’17 was 2 or 3, I did one that I wanted to hang on the wall. But I was 23 pieces short! Of course I asked the toddler, and she insisted she had not touched it. I contacted the company and they sent me a new puzzle. It was cut a different direction, so I had to just start over. A while later, maybe a year or two, I was in a store room and there were some old tea tins in there the kids used to play with. I opened one up and there were 23 puzzle pieces.

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@abasket just looked at the puzzle, definitely see why you would want to frame it.

I bought decoupage glue for the puzzle. I put the puzzle on waxed paper and glued one side and then the other. Bought a frame at Michael’s or Hobby Lobby. Probably not Hobby Lobby because I usually boycott that place.

It looks like a pretty easy puzzle to put together.

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We take a 1000 piece puzzle to the Jersey Shore every summer. If DD is with us, it just gets done. She has a knack for just picking up pieces and putting them where they belong. Last summer, she wasn’t able to come to this vacation, and I tried to finish the puzzle in the week…but it was a doozie!

Anyone else want a puzzle table? My neighbor has one. The top opens and the puzzle (not complete) is under that top. It’s fabulous. When you are done for the day, you just close it! It’s a little pricey…but…

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For you adventurous puzzle people, last year Costco had a 60,000 —yes, 60,000 piece puzzle.

Apparently, it’s broken up into 60 sections of 1,000 pieces, to be put together when all finished. But! were the heck would you assemble this?? Finished, it’s 8’ x 29’…

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My D has a puzzle table! She and her fiancé always have a puzzle in progress and they have cats so it keeps them out of it

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The largest puzzle that I have done (with help), both in terms of physical size and number of pieces, was a 3D puzzle of New York with 5,000 pieces. It did take us a while.

We do a 1,000 piece puzzle every summer. I seem to do most of it, but do get some help (particularly when a daughter visits). We generally start with the edge. Then we look for something that provides a hint. The one that we did last summer for example had a road through the picture that was the next thing to put together across the middle of the picture. Then we branched out from there.

For the puzzle in the original post, I would start with the edge. Then I would do boxes that are the most distinguished by color. For example the blue rectangle in the upper right and the yellow rectangle on the bottom near the left might be good ones to do early. Then I might do the white one towards the left. This might be a “floater” for a while until I finished the rectangle to its left. When having done a floater, since the edge is generally already complete (or nearly complete) I just put it down in the right place in the middle of the puzzle, and then think about how to connect it.

I usually find it useful to look at both shapes and color. Some puzzles have many pieces with similar color and you need to look at shapes, whereas some other puzzles you can solve largely focusing on color as your primary sorting method and shape being a local issue used to connect a modest number of pieces with similar colors.

In terms of missing pieces, I hope that it does not happen. After working on a puzzle, I carefully check my arms to see if any piece is stuck to me and also check the floor near where the puzzle is. Sometimes you can get replacement pieces from the manufacturer, but I have only succeeded in doing this once or twice. Occasionally you get a puzzle together and there is just a piece missing. Very often a small number of pieces are impossible to find and appear to be missing, but then they show up when you are almost finished.

After the puzzle is completed, I store it in a small number of already put together large rectangles. This way if you want to do the same puzzle again you can see that there are no pieces missing before you break it up and start to solve it.

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Dear wife is a puzzle person, I definitely am NOT. Every Christmas I give her two puzzles depicting some location we either visited in the year coming to an end, or will be visiting in the upcoming year.

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My husband hates puzzles because he loves puzzles. If there is a puzzle going he can’t stop working on it. And he doesn’t like that.

My great or maybe great great grandmother made wooden puzzles. Elaborate puzzles with a jigsaw, complete with whimsies. Someone threw most of them out, seeing no value in them. My mother had a few that were spared and they made her kind of a puzzle snob. She hated cardboard puzzles and only did wooden ones. I used to give her Wentworth puzzles. For my part, I can take them or leave them.

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My S26 and I like puzzles. He’s also one of those kids who just has a knack for knowing where the pieces belong. It’s been that way since he was 3, putting together those huge Melissa & Doug puzzles.

We always do puzzles over the long winter break, and sometimes during other parts of the year. I tend to fish out and work on the edge pieces while he dives into a pattern or the objects inside the puzzle. The edge pieces are “boring” to him :slight_smile:

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I’m confused about this? What are “already put together large rectangles”?

We do almost exclusively 1,000 piece White Mountain puzzles - mostly the nostalgic collages (not big on landscapes). Sometimes, depending on the theme, we will do a 1,000 piece Springbok. Those have irregularly-shaped pieces which are a good brain challenge for us. I’ve recently gotten into Hart Puzzles, which have some nice images.

Depending on what’s going on in life, we usually do 1-2 puzzles a week.

I have a puzzle board (might be Bits and Pieces brand) that sits on top of a cheap white banquet table I picked up at Wal Mart. We use inexpensive cafeteria trays (can find them on Amazon) to sort pieces. They stack, which is a space saver. We do edge pieces and corners first, but also keep an eye out for pieces from larger images in the puzzle we can group together.

When finished, I put the pieces in a Ziploc and then rubber-band the box. It goes on a shelf in the basement with a piece of painter’s tape on it with the month/year. Right now we are working through all our puzzles for a second time, even though we have some new ones sitting there. Not sure if there will be a third time, but that’s something to worry about later lol.

Aren’t you glad you asked? :joy:

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I assumed he meant he “broke” it up but into just a few sections of put-together pieces. I like puzzles if they’re around. There was a big puzzle project at my school where different classrooms did puzzles that eventually went together as a mural near the library one year.

Here is a puzzle I would never buy:
https://www.amazon.com/Passover-Matzah-1000-Piece-Puzzle/dp/B0BX532G5G

As my husband says, it sounds about as fun as breaking a matza and putting it back together.

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Yep…that’s my DD. She would line up a dozen fisher price puzzles and dump all the pieces in a pile…and then put them back together. She has great spatial awareness!

We have a cat which presents its own issues doing puzzles. I have one of those felt puzzle mats you can supposedly roll up if you want to pause doing the puzzle. I don’t find they work very well.

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