Jigsaw puzzle

John Spilsbury's "Europe divided into its kingdoms, etc." (1766). He created the jigsaw puzzle for educational purposes, and called them "Dissected Maps".[2][3]

The engraver and cartographer John Spilsbury, of London, is believed to have produced the first jigsaw puzzle around 1760, using a marquetry saw.[1] Early jigsaws, known as dissections, were produced by mounting maps on sheets of hardwood and cutting along national boundaries, creating a puzzle useful for the teaching of geography.[1] Such "dissected maps" were used to teach the children of King George III and Queen Charlotte by royal governess Lady Charlotte Finch.[4][5]

British printed puzzle from 1874.

The name "jigsaw" came to be associated with the puzzle around 1880 when fretsaws became the tool of choice for cutting the shapes. Since fretsaws are distinct from jigsaws, the name appears to be a misnomer.[1] Cardboard jigsaw puzzles appeared during the late 1800s, but were slow to replace the wooden jigsaw due to the manufacturer's belief that cardboard puzzles would be perceived as being of low quality, and the fact that profit margins on wooden jigsaws were larger.[1]

Wooden jigsaw pieces, cut by hand

Jigsaw puzzles soared in popularity during the Great Depression, as they provided a cheap, long-lasting, recyclable form of entertainment.[1][6] It was around this time that jigsaws evolved to become more complex and more appealing to adults.[1] They were also given away in product promotions, and used in advertising, with customers completing an image of the product being promoted.[1][6]

Sales of wooden jigsaw puzzles fell after World War II as improved wages led to price increases, while at the same time improvements in manufacturing processes made paperboard jigsaws more attractive.[6]

According to the Alzheimer Society of Canada, doing jigsaw puzzles is one of many activities that can help keep the brain active and may contribute to reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.[7]

Demand for jigsaw puzzles saw a surge, comparable to that of the Great Depression, during the COVID-19 pandemic stay at home orders.[8][9]

Paperboard jigsaw pieces

Most modern jigsaw puzzles are made out of paperboard since they are easier and cheaper to mass-produce than the original wooden models. An enlarged photograph or printed reproduction of a painting or other two-dimensional artwork is glued onto the cardboard before cutting. This board is then fed into a press. The press forces a set of hardened steel blades of the desired shape through the board until it is fully cut. This procedure is similar to making shaped cookies with a cookie cutter. The forces involved, however, are tremendously greater and a typical 1000-piece puzzle requires a press that can generate upwards of 700 tons of force to push the knives of the puzzle die through the board. A puzzle die is a flat board, often made from plywood, which has slots cut or burned in the same shape as the knives that are used. These knives are set into the slots and covered in a compressible material, typically foam rubber, which serves to eject the cut puzzle pieces.

Beginning in the 1930s, jigsaw puzzles were cut using large hydraulic presses which now cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cuts gave a very snug fit, but the cost limited jigsaw puzzle manufacture only to large corporations. Recent roller press design achieve the same effect, at a lower cost.

New technology has enabled laser-cutting of wooden or acrylic jigsaw puzzles. The advantage of cutting with a laser is that the puzzle can be custom cut into any size, any shape, with any size (or any number) of pieces. Many museums have laser cut acrylic puzzles made of some of their more important pieces of art so that children visiting the museum can see the original piece and then assemble a jigsaw puzzle of the image that is also in the same shape as the piece of art. Acrylic is used because the pieces are very durable, waterproof, and can withstand continued use without the image fading, or the pieces wearing out, or becoming frayed. Also, because the print and cut patterns are computer-based, lost pieces can be manufactured without remaking the entire puzzle.

By the early 1960s, Tower Press was the world's largest maker of jigsaw puzzles, acquired by Waddingtons in 1969.[10] Major jigsaw puzzle manufacturers currently include Ravensburger and Tower Press. Wooden and specialty jigsaw puzzle manufacturers include Artifact Puzzles, Liberty Puzzles, and Wentworth Puzzles. In addition to large-scale puzzle manufacturers, numerous puzzle makers work in an artisanal style, handcrafting and handcutting jigsaw puzzles.[11][12][13][14]

Jigsaw puzzle software allowing rotation of pieces

A three-dimensional puzzle composed of several two-dimensional puzzles stacked on top of one another

A puzzle without a picture

Jigsaw puzzles come in a variety of sizes. Among those targeted to adults, 300, 500, and 750 piece puzzles are considered "smaller". More sophisticated, but still common, jigsaw puzzles come in sizes of 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000, 7,500, 8,000, 9,000, 13,200, 18,000, 24,000, 32,000 and 40,000 pieces.

Jigsaw puzzles that are geared towards children may have many fewer pieces, typically much larger. For very young children, a puzzle with as few as 4 to 9 "large"-size pieces (so not a choking hazard) are common. These are usually made of wood or plastic, to maintain durability, and are able to be cleaned without being damaged.

The most common layout for a thousand-piece puzzle is 38 pieces by 27 pieces, for a total count of 1,026 pieces. The majority of 500-piece puzzles are 27 pieces by 19 pieces. A few puzzles are made double-sided, so that they can be solved from either side. This adds a level of complexity, because it cannot be certain that the correct side of the piece is being viewed and assembled with the other pieces.

"Family puzzles" come in 100–550 pieces with three different-sized pieces from large to small. The pieces are placed from large to small, going in one direction or towards the middle of the puzzle. This allows a family of puzzlers of different skill levels and different-sized hands to work on the puzzle at the same time. Companies like Springbok, Cobble Hill, Ravensburger, and Suns Out make this type of specialty puzzle.

There are also three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. Many of these are made of wood or styrofoam and require the puzzle to be solved in a certain order; some pieces will not fit in if others are already in place. Also common are puzzle boxes: simple three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles with a small drawer or box in the center for storage.

Another type of jigsaw puzzle, which is considered a 3-D puzzle, is a puzzle globe. Like a 2-D puzzle, a globe puzzle is often made of plastic and the assembled pieces form a single layer. But the final form is a three-dimensional shape. Most globe puzzles have designs representing spherical shapes such as the Earth, the Moon, and historical globes of the Earth.

Jigsaw puzzles can vary greatly in price depending on the complexity, number of pieces, and brand. Children's puzzles can be as cheap as around $5.00, while larger puzzles can be closer to $50.00. The most expensive puzzle to date was sold for $27,000 in 2005 at a charitable auction for The Golden Retriever Foundation.[15]

Several word puzzle games use pieces similar to those used in jigsaw puzzles. Examples include Alfa-Lek, Jigsaw Words, Nab-It!, Puzzlage, Typ-Dom, Word Jigsaw, and Yottsugo.[16]

A "whimsy" piece in a wooden jigsaw puzzle

A 3D jigsaw puzzle

Many puzzles are termed "fully interlocking". This means that adjacent pieces are connected in such a way that if one piece is moved horizontally, the other pieces move with it, preserving the connection. Sometimes the connection is tight enough to pick up a solved part by holding one piece.

Some fully interlocking puzzles have pieces all of a similar shape, with rounded tabs out on opposite ends, with corresponding blanks cut into the intervening sides to receive the tabs of adjacent pieces. Other fully interlocking puzzles may have tabs and blanks variously arranged on each piece, but they usually have four sides, and the numbers of tabs and blanks thus add up to four. The uniform-shaped fully interlocking puzzles, sometimes called "Japanese Style", are the most difficult, because the differences in shapes between pieces can be very subtle.

Most jigsaw puzzles are square, rectangular, or round, with edge pieces that have one side that is either straight or smoothly curved to create this shape, plus four corner pieces if the puzzle is square or rectangular. Some jigsaw puzzles have edge pieces that are cut just like all the rest of the interlocking pieces, with no smooth edge, to make them more challenging. Other puzzles are designed so the shape of the whole puzzle forms a figure, such as an animal. The edge pieces may vary more in these cases.

The pieces of spherical jigsaw, like immersive panorama jigsaw, can be triangular shaped, according to the rules of tessellation of the geoid primitive.

The designer Yuu Asaka created "Jigsaw Puzzle 29" which has not four corner pieces but five corner pieces, and is made from pale blue acrylic without a picture. [17] It was awarded the Jury Honorable Mention of 2018 Puzzle Design Competition. [18] But many puzzlers had solved it easily, he created "Jigsaw Puzzle 19" which composed only with corner pieces as revenge. [19] It was made with transparent green acrylic pieces without a picture. [20]

The logo of Wikipedia is a globe made out of jigsaw pieces. The incomplete sphere appears to have some pieces missing, symbolizing the room to add new knowledge.

In the logo of the Colombian Office of the Attorney General appears a jigsaw puzzle piece in foreground. They named it as "The Key Piece": "The jigsaw puzzle piece is the appropiate [sic?] symbol for visual representation of the Office, since it includes the concepts of searching, solution and response that the institution pursuits through its investigation activity."[26]

Symbol for autism

An "autism awareness" ribbon, featuring red, blue, and yellow jigsaw pieces

Jigsaw puzzle pieces were first used as a symbol for autism in 1963 by the United Kingdom's National Autistic Society.[29] The organization chose jigsaw pieces for their logo to represent the "puzzling" nature of autism and the inability to "fit in" due to social differences, and also because jigsaw pieces were recognizable and otherwise unused. Puzzle pieces have since been incorporated into the logos and promotional materials of many organizations, including the Autism Society of America and Autism Speaks.

Proponents of the autism rights movement oppose the jigsaw puzzle iconography, stating that metaphors such as "puzzling" and "incomplete" are harmful to autistic people. Critics of the puzzle piece symbol instead advocate for a rainbow-colored infinity symbol representing diversity.[30] In 2017, the journal Autism concluded that the use of the jigsaw puzzle evoked negative public perception towards autistic individuals, and in February 2018 removed the puzzle piece from their cover.[31]

• Jigsaw puzzle accessories
• Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec, a novel told as a jigsaw puzzle
• Lost in Translation (poem)
• Tessellation
• Three-dimensional edge-matching puzzle

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jigsaw puzzle.

• Jigsaw-puzzle.org at Wayback Machine (November 2000)