How do you solve jigsaw puzzles?

I was recently bragging to a friend about how I’d finally just about conquered a difficult jigsaw puzzle with methodology and techniques, My friend of course asked[1] to which methodologies and techniques I might be referring.

Background

I was raised on jigsaw puzzles. We always had a Christmas puzzle at my house. When I was much younger, we did them throughout the year. As I got older, we only had the Christmas puzzle, but we always had that one.[2] Everyone in my nuclear family did it: mom, dad, twin sister. Even though, we all had different backgrounds and predilections, we all got pretty good at them. Like, I might have been the only one occasionally and semi-robotically machine-gunning pieces in at a frightening pace, but everyone was getting pieces in at a pretty good clip. We were all rewarded enough to keep going. More on that later.

Perhaps jigsaw puzzles are how I learned to analyze a problem into smaller problems. Perhaps they’re how I learned patience and perseverance to tackle longer problems. Perhaps they’re how I learned to put in the work before reaping the fun.

Why I enjoy them

I’m not sure if it’s always been this way but, for as long as I can remember, jigsaw-puzzle pieces just kind of jump out at me. Like, someone will say “I need this piece here,” and point to a gap. It has happened to me often enough that I can scan the table and say “I see it,” and, most of the time, it’s the right piece.

This is also perhaps a good part of the reason that I’m left to do them alone now.[3]

It is very much the reason why I like to do them, because I get a little frisson.[4]

Methodologies and techniques

So, now that I’m thinking about it, here are a few things that I tend to do and not to do.

I never start by willy-nilly slapping pieces together. Someone’s got to flip all of the pieces over. It might as well be me.[5]

OK. Pieces are all flipped over and, most importantly, visible.

While I’m doing that, I sort out the edge pieces, as many as I can. I don’t obsess with getting them all (I’m 80% finished with a tough puzzle right now and am still missing one).

After that, there are different approaches for different types of puzzles.

How do you put pieces together? You get the pieces that fit together near each other. Then, you’re more likely to be able to fit them together. If they’re on different sides of the table, or in different boxes, then you’ve got no chance.

Oh, the boxes. I forgot about those.

The boxes and engineering

It’s a trick my Dad taught me.[6] Instead of laying all of the pieces out on the table, you lay them out in other puzzle boxes from other puzzles. That way, you can stack them and put it away so the cat doesn’t f@&k everything up. Also, it takes less space. Also, if you build something together that then needs to go inside the already-built border, you can flap down one of the sides of the box[7], and easily slide it into place.

I guess I like puzzles because they’re basically an engineering problem.

Sorting

But, at heart, and, before I digressed into discussing boxes, jigsaw puzzles are a sorting problem.[8]

So, how do you sort pieces? Sorting by color or shape are your go-to piles to start making. Usually, as you’re sorting, you’re already kind of fitting pieces together.

If it’s not color, it’s significant features, like any edge between two different colors or patterns. Any significant patterns or grains are somewhere to start, as well.

The boxes help keep your different groups separate from each other. “Gimme the red box,” was not uncommon at Christmas. “I need noses,” was perhaps another.

The important thing is to be able to see all the pieces at once or be able to quickly scan a grouping of likely candidates. Hence: flip ‘em over and make ‘em accessible.

A jigsaw puzzle koan

Here’s something to remember that is encouraging: The more pieces you fit together, the fewer pieces remain. That means that solving a jigsaw puzzle has the same rewarding feeling as standing in line at a well-designed theme-park ride, or a ski lift, or an off-ramp, or anywhere with several lines merging into one: the longer you stick with it, the faster it goes.

The more pieces you fit together, the fewer pieces remain.

But, honestly, color and shape are the obvious ones. Everyone does those. They work for puzzles with fields of color or distinctive areas that cover a good bit of territory.

Adapting to diversity

How the hell do you tackle a monster like the riot of completely heterogeneous color in this one?

heye-go-camping-2000-teile

This is the 2024 Christmas puzzle. It’s 2000 pieces. 2000 pieces is a lot. You can buy it at Orell Füssli.

There is such a riot of detail that it’s overwhelming. You’re going to feel like any piece could go anywhere. That’s where you have to really just start to see the drawing. You can’t let your brain elide detail. You have to keep it hyper-aware to every detail. Otherwise, your eyes will just sweep over the thing and you’ll say “I can’t find where this piece goes,” put it down, pick up another one, lather, rinse, repeat.

Frustration.

You need to get a win in order to want to keep playing.

As I already mentioned above, whatever I’ve got going for me puzzle-wise guarantees me more than enough mini-wins to make solving jigsaw puzzles fun.

Actively looking

So, back to looking at the drawing.

There are unique bits, like the market sign, the white trailer, the red tent, the blue tent, the striped tent, the winding road. Those are pretty strongly separable from one another. You have to be careful, though, but the puzzle designer usually helps you out. The white trailer on the bottom-left has little flags draped on it, while the one on the bottom-right has lights. If you find a white piece with lights on it, you know where it’s going, right? It’s the same if you find a white piece with a bit of spiky color.

If you find a tire, that’s good! There aren’t that many of those! But there are several! So, scan the picture and figure out which tire it is. Place the piece where it goes, even if it doesn’t fit yet.

You can’t find the tire? Look again. This time, remember to keep your focus; don’t let your lazy mind drift and elide what it considers to be unnecessary detail.[9] If you couldn’t find the tire, it’s probably because you glided your lazy eye over one on a wheelbarrow, or on the back of a car, or a trailer.

Ok, then there’s the trees. Undifferentiated. Hopeless. No. The puzzle designers are not going to leave you in the lurch like that. The trees on the right-hand side have larger lights in them, whereas the ones on the bottom-left have a sprinkling of much-smaller lights or snow on them. The ones on the top-left have no white spots. The ones in the middle-left have stronger, unique colors.

First, take one step. Then, another.

This is where you start. Remember, every piece you fit into another is no longer in the pool of completely undifferentiated pieces. Every piece you fit is a win. Every piece you fit leaves you with a puzzle that’s one piece smaller than the puzzle you had just a second ago. It’s now easier.

For this puzzle, I made groups in two stages. I would collect everything red into one place—enhance proximity—then capitalize on proximity to make smaller groups within the e..g., red group. At one point, I just collected animal faces like a serial killer.

The last resort: memorize the picture

This puzzle seems designed to foil the particular skills I have[10] that make me able to relatively often solve jigsaw puzzles at what I’ve been told is a frightening, nay offputting, nay joy-killing pace.

Instead—and this is going to sound trite—I had to…well…learn every detail of the drawing. I spent a lot of time with the box-top in one hand[11], and a piece in the other, scanning for where it goes. I often laid the damned thing down in the middle of a vast, open space, knowing it goes right there and letting it await the forty brethren that would eventually surround it.

Eventually, though, what really worked best was that I learned pretty much every damned detail of the drawing, which finally allowed me to fall back on my jigsaw-puzzle super power of knowing where a piece goes just by looking at it. I would just scan over the unplaced pieces and see “fox face”, or “owl wing”, or “tire”.

I finally got to a point where I could see a piece and know where it goes. I could start looking for a piece I wanted, and then know it when I saw it.

Getting to this stage was a combination of learning the drawing and just reducing the number of pieces left. The 20% I have left is going to be easy.[12]