Jigsaw Puzzle and leisure time activity

I used to put together puzzles regularly. I've only had one that I just gave up on. The title was "Little Red Riding Hood's Hood". Every piece was the same color and shade of red (1000+ pieces), and the shape was a circle. After about three months of pulling out my hair and my wife telling me to get it off the table I threw it out. Now I'm just hooked on crossword puzzles.

Andy

I've never been much of a puzzle person so I can't give you any tips. In the last two weeks I've gotten interested in solving the Sudoku in the daily newspaper. I'm ok with Monday thru Wednesday but they get a little tough for me after that.

That's a puzzle after my heart right there. I do love hot peppers. Maybe I could get a copy of the puzzle and have my wife put it together for me. 🙂

How do you glue it together....piece by piece, or....?

Last Christmas we had a lot of people at our house for dinner and to spend the day together. Before everyone arrived I set up a card table in the corner and opened a 500 piece puzzle box. People loved standing around and pecking at it off and on throughout the day. By dinner it was finished. I believe the concensus was to start with the edges; at least that's how it seemed to evolve.

Don

Jigsaw Puzzle and leisure time activity>Gluing the puzzle

there is a special glue that you pour on and then smear around like using 'bartop'.

I just finished one in under six months. I was pretty proud because the box said "Two to Four Years"..

I've worked on hundreds of them over the past 50-some years. Step one is to assemble the border. Many times the picture on the box is not precisely the same as the puzzle itself. Extra on the top or some missing on the sides or something similar. Next, in most cases, it helps to sort by distinct colors, then by two-tone pieces that must fall on the border of two distinct colors. A further help is to then arrange your groupings such that similarly shaped pieces are clustered. For example: one common piece shape has a protrusion going up, left and right with a gap on the bottom. Another common piece has gaps on all four sides, sort of like a funny-looking X-shape. You'll soon learn which common shape is most-used adjacent to other common shapes. Search for anything unique in the picture that can be fairly easily put together then try to position as closely as possible to its final placement. This really helps to define smaller areas of the puzzle to tackle rather than trying to jump all over.

Say you have a picture of a rowboat tied to a short rickety pier on a lake where the water/sky border is extremely indistinct. Tackle the rowboat or pier first. Soon you will find which type of piece is generally adjacent to a specific different type of piece. This helps when you get to that awful piece that might be sky, might be water, might be something else.

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> I have a question about puzzles; I've always started by forming the frame with the straight edges and then working in from there.
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> During this puzzle, though, I've considered starting by separating colors and working on shapes by color... without regard to the edge pieces.
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> Does anyone else enjoy a jigsaw puzzle and how do you assemble them? It's sort of like a "busman's holiday" especially since I am working on a difficult conflict with deeds going back to the early 1800's...

Foggy!!! A great combo there, I must admit. 🙂 :clap: :bye:

I am a puzzle loving person too!! I use to have a spare room dedicated just for doing jigsaw puzzles and a few other hobbies. I'll see if I can find the pics. I sure do miss it; I have always found it therapeutic to be able to sit down, turn the radio on, and go at a puzzle for a few hours. My favorites are Spingboks & Ravensburgers.

As far as assembly, I start with the edges. As I am digging through the box looking for the edges, I will make piles and I separate pieces by theme/subject. Like if there's a pear, apple, orange, etc... I'll put what looks like pears with pears, etc... then figure it all out after I get my border done. If it's a very difficult puzzle with lots of different activity, I'll first look at the subject and then go from there via shape of the piece of puzzle. Springboks are notorious for tricking ya this way and giving you a challenge, probably why I like them so much. Except their 2000 pieces...Man...those take me days to do!! I can whip out a 500 piece in a 1-4 hours. 1000 pieces take a bit longer. Dang now I want to work on a puzzle!! See what you started?? 😉

> I just finished one in under six months. I was pretty proud because the box said "Two to Four Years"..

You crack me up, Deral!! 😛

Jigsaw Puzzle Hobby Room Pics

Here's my old puzzle room. I'll have one again, one of these days!! 🙂

Table for puzzles. Now being used for Beer Leg stuff.

Rest of room was wall to wall puzzles. Organized by maker, size of box, etc...with tropical foilage tossed in to create a happy, energizing hobby area. 🙂

I also used this room as a quiet reading spot.

We like the Wysocki puzzles. Fairly easy to work and entertaining.

http://www.wholesalepuzzles.com/shop/artist_puzzles/charles_wysocki_jigsaw_puzzles

I start by focussing on the edges by first identifying the corner pieces.
However, during that effort, if I start recognizing common areas, like your individual chiles, I'll start hooking some of those up.
Same as your plan. I would love to do another big one but with 4 cats it's likely I would end up missing many pieces and just as many half-eaten.

Now for a real challenge, go get one of those 3D puzzles.
Had a neighbor work on one for about a month before she gave up on it.
She gave it to me in the state she had it in.
After a short while it ocurred to me she had some pieces in the wrong place. This was a church with lots of ivy covering so I could see how easy to make those mistakes. After some disassemblies, I had it done in about 2 hours. I was as amazed as she was. It was most difficult!!

We work a puzzle every Christmas holiday. It gets set out on the side table, and everyone can spend leisure time on it.Sometimes we'll glue them, like the last Christmas we had an exchange student. Everyone that worked on it signs it before it's glued.
Then this last Christmas, we had everyone home including my Mil. We all signed the puzzle and she (mil) took it home to re assemble and glue as a keepsake.

Sudoku for me

RADU

Sudoku is definitely fun

Sudoku is a nice challenge while doing other things like watching television or babysitting. They can range in difficulty from very easy to almost impossible. One interesting variation is a grouping of five panels with the center one being interlinked to each of the four corner panels. The really tough ones use letters instead of numbers in order to create panel segments of 16 and 25 squares instead of the standard 9 squares.

Sudoku is definitely fun

I like the extremely difficult that require concentration and no distraction.

I find the loo a great peaceful place for the extremes.

RADU

Sudoku is definitely fun

Trying to imagine someone strolling past your loo and hearing something like: "Yes! Yes! That's it! Oh, Baby, that was great but exhausting!"

LOLO !

Radu

Sudoku...

:-O Oh my...

Puzzles

The older ladies in the neighborhood have their daily puzzle hour from 4-5pm, which my wife attends.

Good for them, better for me!