- Are Puzzles Good for Anxiety? How to Solve Jigsaw Puzzles?
The puzzle box that I am eagerly waiting for, has arrived. I rip open the cover impatiently and carefully spill the 1000 small pieces of the puzzle onto a specially cleared table. I will spend the next 4 hours, or days or weeks, putting the puzzle together. Basically, I am paying someone to cut up an obviously charming picture into a 1000 small uneven pieces, so that I can put the pieces back together again. And achieve that charming picture! Wuhoo!
Am I crazy or what? But believe me there are a zillion others like me who adore puzzles. We even have a special term to define us. We are called Dissectologists.
It’s always the small pieces that make the big picture.
The History! Until the 19th Century
John Spilsbury was a map engraver, who in 1762, created perhaps the world’s first jigsaw puzzle. He mounted a master map on wood and cut out the countries with a saw. Children eagerly put the pieces back together for a geography lesson. He wisely saw a business opportunity and created dissected maps of the World, Asia, Africa, America, England etc. Puzzles were called dissected maps or dissected puzzles and hence the term DISSECTOLOGIST.
The jigsaw, a special kind of jagged saw, was invented in the 1880s. Because the jigsaw was used to cut the wooden pieces of the dissected maps, by the end of the 19th century we called them JIGSAW PUZZLES. Source — Wentworth wooden puzzles — Now mostly the pieces are made of plastic, or hardboard and are machine-cut in factories. We merely call them PUZZLES.
Willingness to be puzzled is a valuable trait to cultivate from childhood to advanced inquiry. Noam Chomsky
What is the fastest way of solving a puzzle?
Choose your puzzle wisely. Select one with distinct patterns and the puzzle solves itself like magic! Or be adventurous. Choose a puzzle with a plain blue sky, or one with a bunch of tall pine trees! There you go! 500 pieces that look almost the same! Mind boggling. If this is your first ever puzzle, be kind to yourself. Select a puzzle with several distinct colors and patterns.
First find all the border pieces. See! They have a flat side. Easy to find! While you are doing so, keep aside the corner pieces, they have 2 flat sides. You will find 4 such pieces. Just stating the obvious! Assemble the border. The corner pieces will help you get started.
OH! You have to hang on to the carton. You need that. I had ripped that thrown away my first ever puzzle box, and paid the price for it. I did not recall what the picture looked like! Whew.
Sort out the remaining pieces by color or pattern. A pattern could be the wavy lines of a dress, the wordings on a banner, an umbrella or the foamy edge of a wave on a sandy beach.
I further sort the pieces by shape. Sometimes I resort to meticulously trying out every single piece until I find the one that fits. Urrggh! I hate it when I have to do that.
Do puzzles cause anxiety?
Surprisingly, no they don’t. They actually have a calming effect. Solving puzzles is a great stress buster. You know for sure, the piece that fits is somewhere there, and you can find it. Unlike the problems that work, family, relationships, etc bring upon us, this puzzle is a finite problem with a definite acceptable finite solution!
Real men do jigsaw puzzles.
How do Puzzles impact relationships?
Families work together to solve a 1000 piece puzzle. There is no claim to ‘I Did It.’ You walk into the room, explore the puzzle, find a piece and hey! The family is closer to the solution. Two can sit together at the messy puzzle table and try to make sense of it! Puzzle time can be used to connect and share. It helps build social skills.
Are there Puzzle Contests?
The annual 24 hours puzzle contest of Belgium goes back 30 years! Spain, USA, UK host many popular puzzle events and contests. Individual, and teams race against time to complete 500 or 1000 piece puzzles. The events usually have multiple puzzles to solve. The Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester New York has a collection of a whopping 7500 puzzles dating to as far back as the 1700s!
You are like a corner piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Without you I am just completely lost. A compliment I am happy to receive!
Now that we are mostly working from home!
Solving puzzles has become a great process to take away the monotony of confined spaces. Puzzles are believed to help create neural connections in the brain, foster right brain and left brain activity… and give you a fine excuse to not load the dish-washer today! Be good to yourself. Play it with your family.
Ratna Rao has authored 5 books of which 3 are Amazon bestsellers. She believes in the comfort and benefits of Play Therapy. And has authored a series of books that parents and care-givers of babies and children can read and use. The books have attractive black&white illustrations in the form of happy doodles that excite the imagination of the child. Click Here to read more.
