It took only 43 minutes, but on April 9, team Piecing it Together lived up to its name and won the Newton Free Library’s first Jigsaw Puzzle Race.
The competing teams, which also included Inner Piece, Triple Threat, Block Party, and Give Piece a Chance, battled good-naturedly to complete the same 500-piece landscape puzzles donated by Ravensburger in less than two hours as a timer ticked down.
“I’m obsessed,” said Mariana Ovalle, a member of the winning team. “It’s fun … we like the competition part of it.”
Puzzle races are one of the latest ways people have been enjoying the pastime over the centuries.
“The very first jigsaw puzzle is said to have been made by London mapmaker John Spilsbury in the 1760s,” according to CBS News.
“Spilsbury created his ‘dissected map’ as an educational tool for children by pasting the map onto a thin mahogany board and then cutting the pieces along the geographical lines,” according to the Strong National Museum of Play.
While the number of pieces and the subject matter may have changed over the years, people have been experimenting with different puzzle-solving techniques to see which are the best.
At the library, members of some teams gave each other advice and helped to look for matching pieces, while others rotated around their puzzles, changing seats to tackle different sections when they became stuck.
Although most of the players were serious about finishing quickly and winning, laughter was heard throughout Druker Auditorium.
As the timer hit the 22-minute mark, the majority of teams had finished the rectangular edges of their puzzles and a good amount of the interior. However, even as fingers flew, the most challenging parts of the puzzle — the blue-and-white speckled background mountains – remained a mystery.
By 41 minutes, the two top teams were separated by only a few empty patches, until Piecing it Together pulled out the win.
“I’m very excited because it was my first time [competing in a puzzle race],” said Jen Devlin, on the winning team.
“Landscapes can be some of the hardest [puzzles to do],” said Anne Bidner, another first-place winner.
Looking satisfied with their accomplishment, the winners gratefully accepted gift certificates from Newtonville Books and smiled.
Asked why the library decided to hold a puzzle race, Helen Lee, Supervisor of Adult Services, said they’ve “become more popular in recent years and they are a fun way for families and friends to gather for a communal activity.”
In fact, some of the Newton participants visited other libraries and entered their contests as well to keep up their solving skills.
Asked about future puzzle activities, Lee said, “We hope to offer this event again for participants 16+.”
They also recommended checking out puzzles in the Library’s “Library of Things” or attending the annual puzzle swap.
