“Why? Why do I do this to myself?”
Karen Puzzles fans know this phrase well. This YouTube jigsaw puzzle guru constantly chooses difficult puzzles to solve and then has second thoughts when she actually does the puzzle. I now understand exactly how she feels.
I bought an owl puzzle at the thrift store: “I Am Owl” by Madd Capp Puzzles. It’s only 535 pieces, but it is owl-shaped and includes only a few colors. I love birds and enjoy puzzles, so I thought it would be fun. It turned out to be the second-hardest puzzle I’ve ever done.
What made it so hard?
It’s random cut, not grid or ribbon cut. The curvy edge doesn’t work well for a grid-based cut or even straight-ish rows. This means lots of odd-shaped pieces that defy prediction and are difficult to sort.
There were lots of false edges — pieces that look like they could be part of the outer edge but actually go somewhere in the middle. This makes the edge, which is usually the easy part, hard.
I had to look at the box. Not looking at the box makes puzzling more fun because you are unraveling the mystery of the image for yourself. But this image was already so mysterious — just white and black and brown — and it had such weird pieces that I don’t think I would ever have figured out the bottom edge without the box.
Lastly, the feathers were very much like “fur texture” which most people find hard to do. The random patterning on the feathers meant that I couldn’t accurately predict what would be on the piece I needed. Even though I sorted and sorted and sorted, I would get stuck and then just try pieces until something fit.
It took me 18 hours 24 second over six days to solve which is a long time for a roughly 500-piece puzzle. My minutes-per-piece* (mpp) was 2.06. This means the only harder puzzle I’ve done to date is the Impossibles Great Wall of China (2.58 mpp). Even a puzzle that looks really hard like the Sibley World of Birds puzzle was easier (1.48 mpp). And I enjoyed both of those puzzles more.
Will I ever solve this one again? I don’t think so. So if anyone is interested in doing a really hard owl puzzle, let me know. I have just the thing for you.
Would you do a puzzle like this one?
The fact I use minutes-per-piece as my measure is a sign that I am a casual puzzler**. Speed puzzlers try to hit a pieces-per-minute that is in the double digits. So far, I’ve needed more than one minute per piece for half the puzzles I’ve done, so I’d be reporting fractional pieces per minute for those. Fractional minutes make more sense to me.
**I do time most of my puzzle solves and keep a spreadsheet of statistics. This doesn’t make me a master puzzler, just nerdy.
