Okay, I admit it. I had back problems after softball, so I'm officially old. So I can admit to you that I bought a jigsaw puzzle. I had no choice, because my others are in storage. I have so far completed it twice. I love it.
Okay again, the whole "I'm old and have a jigsaw puzzle" schtick is a bit disingenuous.... I have always loved jigsaw puzzles, and many young people probably would feel unashamed to admit that. Maybe it's a cool hipster thing to like jigsaw puzzles now?
But it feels like a paradigm shift to me... like there's a time in your life, when you're not a kid and you're not "old," in which you're not supposed to be doing a jigsaw puzzle by yourself on the weekend. I'm definitely not a kid, so I must have transitioned to the third phase of my life, in which it's okay again for me to enjoy a jigsaw puzzle. I might as well get a cat. I hate cats.
I remember doing jigsaw puzzles with family at both sets of grandparents' houses. And I remember the story about how I was told I was too young, but I picked up a piece and put it in the right place anyway. I placed the piece just so. Maybe I enjoy it because I think I'm good at it. Maybe I'm human.
Obviously you start with the edges. In physics we'd call it boundary conditions, but the meaning is the same. You have a problem to solve, so first you need to define where the problem begins and where it ends. With puzzles, that becomes your first sorting problem: find the edge pieces; frame your question.
After that, it all depends, on the picture, and on taste. Sort a second time to pick out similar pieces. Be as efficient as you like. Flip all or some of the pieces over, and make any number of piles. This begins the creative part of puzzling. Use some combination of image and shape to put this piece, there.
One of my favorite things is picking a random piece, looking at the box, and deciding exactly where that piece goes. It may be all alone, but it has a place; it is in its place.
You can't impose your preconceptions on the pieces. Whatever way you hold it is choosing one out of the four possible orientations. What you are convinced belongs to this tree turns out to go in that bush. The sky is a good place to lose preconceptions. Faced with seamless shades of blue-white, you pay attention to details of brush stroke, subtle color gradients, size and curve of corners.... the sky is tedious until you can elevate your awareness of subtle differences. In this it is like a meditation.
Of course there is also the tactile sensation of clicking a piece onto its buddies. Doing a puzzle on anything other than a hard surface is barely even worth it. Grabbing the edges of a finished puzzle, picking it up, and bending it like a stiff piece of paper before destroying it is fun too.
Finishing a puzzle is both the best and worst part.
