Having survived this jigsaw puzzle, I have a few questions.
December 21, 2019 7:33 AM Subscribe
Are the die-cut patterns used to produce jigsaw puzzles graded by difficulty or challenge? How have these designs evolved over time, or by geography/market?
I enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles. Like most people, find large areas with no color variation to be particularly challenging due to lack of visual cues for assembly, since in these parts of a puzzle, the shape of the pieces are the only guide.
I am currently working on a puzzle that was handed down to me from a neighbor. I think it's at least several years old and was made in Norway. Brand name is Litor, language on the box is evidently Norwegian ("puslespill" "500 deler").
For the past two days, I've worked on a small single color segment. It was the single most challenging jigsaw puzzle I've ever done because the piece design had many pieces, in the general innies-and-outies puzzle-piece shape, that were aaaaalmost but nnnnnnot quite interchangeable. Several times toward the end I realized I needed to backtrack and find/remove/replace pieces that fit perfectly well into a spot but were not, in the end, the right piece.
This pushed the level of challenge from "pleasant" to "exasperating". I don't recall every having that experience in years of doing puzzles available commercially in the US. In fine MeFi overthinking style, I ended up wondering about die-cut commercial jigsaw puzzle design.
Is the exasperating-similarity mode standard for jigsaw puzzles in other countries? Is this something that designs in the US have evolved away from? Are there categories of challenging jigsaw puzzles that rely on this property? (Googling turns up hard puzzles that turn on other features of jigsaw puzzles: single color or repetitive images, double-sided puzzles, irregular edges so no straight sides, pieces all the identical shape.)
I found an article from the NYT about jigsaw puzzle design about the general issue of how jigsaw puzzles are cut. It led met to the Association for Games and Puzzles International but a quick peruse did not bring up anything about this.
I enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles. Like most people, find large areas with no color variation to be particularly challenging due to lack of visual cues for assembly, since in these parts of a puzzle, the shape of the pieces are the only guide.
I am currently working on a puzzle that was handed down to me from a neighbor. I think it's at least several years old and was made in Norway. Brand name is Litor, language on the box is evidently Norwegian ("puslespill" "500 deler").
For the past two days, I've worked on a small single color segment. It was the single most challenging jigsaw puzzle I've ever done because the piece design had many pieces, in the general innies-and-outies puzzle-piece shape, that were aaaaalmost but nnnnnnot quite interchangeable. Several times toward the end I realized I needed to backtrack and find/remove/replace pieces that fit perfectly well into a spot but were not, in the end, the right piece.
This pushed the level of challenge from "pleasant" to "exasperating". I don't recall every having that experience in years of doing puzzles available commercially in the US. In fine MeFi overthinking style, I ended up wondering about die-cut commercial jigsaw puzzle design.
Is the exasperating-similarity mode standard for jigsaw puzzles in other countries? Is this something that designs in the US have evolved away from? Are there categories of challenging jigsaw puzzles that rely on this property? (Googling turns up hard puzzles that turn on other features of jigsaw puzzles: single color or repetitive images, double-sided puzzles, irregular edges so no straight sides, pieces all the identical shape.)
I found an article from the NYT about jigsaw puzzle design about the general issue of how jigsaw puzzles are cut. It led met to the Association for Games and Puzzles International but a quick peruse did not bring up anything about this.
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This is an (infuriating) thing! Some brands are more prone to this than others. This jigsaw puzzle brand comparison chart from Jigsaw Junkies gives a good starting point for avoiding ones that do this - see their 'piece shape' and 'fit' categories. The modern brands that get low marks (7 or lower) for either shape or fit are:
The worst, grade C:
D-Toys (USA) - puzzles with 2 piece shapes [there are also D-Toys puzzles with 6 piece shapes, labeled "wide variety of shapes", which don't have this problem]
Ceaco (USA)
King
within the group of Acceptable, grade B: There are problems with shape/fit but these can be worth buying if you really like the image:
Educa (Spain)
Castorland (Poland)
Trefl (Poland)
Master Pieces (USA)
New York Puzzle Co (USA)
within the group of Best, grade A - These brands are very good and worth buying in general, but they get dinged a little for shape/fit if you're really a stickler.:
Gibson (UK)
Puzzlelife (Korea)
Anatolian (Turkey)
To be clear, there are a bunch of other brands listed in each of A and B groups on that site that don't have this problem -- instead, they have high marks for shape/fit. I'm just listing the ones here that do have this problem. Lots more info at that link.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:37 AM on December 21, 2019 [6 favorites]