How Are You Celebrating?
Friday, January 29, 2010 at 1:31PM 
We just finished putting together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of this Tom Thomson masterpiece. I can’t say it was the favorite of all the puzzles we’ve completed. A puzzler is forced to examine a work up close and Jack Pine is one of those paintings that looks better, I assume, from across the gallery. And it’s a good thing the pieces had varied—some might say freakish—shapes, because colour often gave little clue to placement.
We’ve moved on to a 1500 piece Ravensburger Puzzle of two whales in the ocean. There’s a whole lot of sea green and very uniform piece shapes. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to tell whether a piece really goes there until you’ve determined that if you do put it there something else will fit with it—or not. But this new oceanscape puzzle is still easier than the Tom Thompson by a long shot. (I say that, mind you, having not yet made it to the massive ocean section.)
Why am I telling you this? Because it’s National Puzzle Day, of course. As usual, I’ll put a few pieces in our jigsaw puzzle this evening, but I’ll say I did it to commemorate the day. What will you do? Here are a few suggestions.
rebecca
So tell me, since it came up in the comments, are you a shape or colour and detail jigsaw puzzler? In other words, do you like to see what shape the missing piece must be and search for it by shape, or do you search for the missing piece by colour and detail?
I go mostly by colour or detail, but one of my children goes primarily by shape. It works best, I think, to have shape puzzlers and a colour puzzlers working together. That way you can delegate the sky to the shaper and save all the fun stuff for the colour people.
Reader Comments (8)
Well, I usually have a puzzled look on my face. Does that count?
Oh, brave Rebecca, that's a hard puzzle! My son and I do much simpler ones with lots of defined images and colors that help us along the way. We're wimps. We try to stay away from lots of sky and/or water.
Wearing a puzzled look is an excellent way to celebrate. :)
I try to stay away from sky or water, too, Rosemary, because I'm a colour and detail puzzler. (Some of my kids, by the way, are more shape oriented.) But I found all these brand new puzzles at a garage sale last summer and I couldn't resist, so now I'm stuck putting them together.
I like to go by color/line but many puzzles require shape. Either way, we enjoy doing a puzzle now and then.
Oh dear. My husband and I played Scrabble last night when we should have puzzled. If only I had seen your post yesterday! Such are the missed opportunities in life.
Wait! I just went to the link and found out that we did celebrate unknowingly, as Scrabble counts! I feel so festive now!
Yep, Scrabble counts so it's all good. :)
I use both methods, but lean mostly on shape. I only try the color/detail method when there is a really distinctive pattern of some kind.