What do you think about Jigsaw puzzles? Do you like them? Do they bore you? For me personally, there is something about jigsaw puzzles that fascinates me.
a drawing of a 4 piece jigsaw puzzle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am not sure what it is exactly, but I think it has something to do with the mental challenge of solving a problem, the problem being the need to reach a visual conclusion by assembling the puzzle pieces correctly so that a visually logical image is created by making the effort of putting the pieces together. A visual conclusion is then reached when the final image appears in all its complete visual glory. I love puzzles!
I recently discovered a website where you can assemble puzzles for free. It is called jigsaw planet, and it offers plenty of puzzle categories to suit your interests. You can either assemble the puzzles that have already been created by other people, or you can upload your own images and create puzzles for yourself. You can then group your new puzzles into puzzle albums that you have created for organizing your puzzles. You decide how many pieces your puzzle will have, as well as what general shapes your puzzle pieces will have. Here is a Puzzle I created at Jigsaw Planet using one of my images created with filters, layers, and blending modes in Photoshop.
Too many puzzle pieces to count (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here are some fun puzzle facts I found at Wikipedia:
1. The first commercialized jigsaw puzzles were made by John Spilsbury in London around 1760.
2. Jigsaw puzzles were first made by cutting a piece of board into small pieces with a Jigsaw after an image had been painted on it.
3. The largest commercial puzzle has 32,256 pieces and is 544 cm by 192 cm in size.
4. The largest non-commercial puzzle ever created and assembled in 2002 by 777 people in Hong Kong, and was 58,435.1 ft² in size and contained 21,600 pieces.
5. Some puzzles have images on both sides of the pieces, so there are therefore 2 puzzles in one, so to speak.
6. These days, there are 3-D puzzles as well as digital puzzles, and if you Google puzzles, you will find links to interesting digital puzzles.
7. According to the Alzheimer Society of Canada, assembling jigsaw puzzles will help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
So…if you want to relax, and do something constructive at the same time, then just assemble a puzzle or 2.
Related articles
- Rules to do a Jigsaw puzzle #1 (chistanote.wordpress.com)
- New No-Cost App Jigsaw (Picture Puzzle) 🙂 from Devarai Features Endless Hours of Challenges, Fun and Entertainment (prweb.com)
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