There was an attempt to…get the pieces to fit.

Ah, the timelessly classic jigsaw puzzle. A pastime that screams “retirement home” and that I had always thought of as mind-numbingly boring. Yet lockdown did strange things to my young-ish brain and something about this gentle activity seemed like it may be a meditative outlet for all of the chaos in the world, and so I put on my slippers, complained about the youth of today and tried to get into puzzling.

Jigsaws have not really been on my radar since the kids’ younger days of putting a duck-shaped block of wood in a duck-shaped hole. However, an office where I worked some time ago had a Christmas tradition of putting out Christmas-themed puzzles on some of the empty desks, available for anyone passing by to help complete. As a newcomer to the office, this seemed a mild and frankly odd Christmas office tradition, compared to more common activities like gorging on shared mince pies or drinking far too much at the Christmas party (where my skills and experience were much more aligned).  Despite this, there was a certain gravitational pull towards the puzzle table every now and again, tempting me to divert attention from an ever-increasing email inbox and to see if I could fit just one more piece…to call it an addiction is perhaps too strong, but there was a certain sadness when the new year rolled around and the puzzles were packed away until next season.

Amongst all of us amateurs putting in the occasional jigsaw piece, it emerged that within the ranks we were in the presence of puzzling royalty. It transpired that one of my younger colleagues took part in competitive puzzling contests (which I never knew existed) and their team was ranked the fourth best in the UK at one point. It was mesmerizing to watch her in action, scanning the scene with zen-like calm before almost robotically plucking piece after piece out of the pile and placing them correctly without a moment’s hesitation.

(Side note: If it sounds like I’m trying to make the act of doing a jigsaw puzzle more exciting, you are 100% correct, but learning that competitive puzzling exists proved to me that this was not the sole pursuit of the infirm and bewildered.)

For my own foray into jigsaws over the 2020 lockdown, my first puzzle was a 500-piece picture of a variety of glazed donuts. There seemed enough variation in the picture that it shouldn’t prove too much of a challenge, and it looked more fun than the standard watercolour pictures of typical English countryside scenes that seem to be the mainstay of puzzle artwork.

Given I had no desire to invest in a special jigsaw mat, the construction took place on the end of the dining table.  This added some much needed jeopardy to the whole process as to whether it could be completed before the whole thing was accidentally knocked to the floor by one of the kids.  As with the Christmas jigsaw at work, the allure of just trying to fit one more piece transcended age barriers as the boys would also occasionally chip in and “help”. Their attempts would not be bounded by any conventional understanding of pattern matching or geometry, and there was a lot of time spent unpicking forced-together pieces whilst desperately trying not to disturb any of the correctly positioned areas.  Slowly, but surely, the jigsaw was completed, and there was admittedly something quite satisfactory about putting the last few pieces into place.  Then, after about 5 minutes of gazing at this achievement, it was gleefully torn apart by the boys into its individual parts and put back in the box.

The love affair with jigsaws ended abruptly on the second box, which will be known henceforth as “that fucking Koi carp picture”. Basking in the glory of the donut jigsaw success, I foolishly decided that I was ready to take on something a bit more challenging. Not something completely impossible, though; there are jigsaws that seem designed only for masochists, which consist of a single colour or of only one uniform thing, like baked beans.  Instead, I picked a picture of some Koi carp swimming around. How hard could it be?  After the quick win of putting the edges in place, it soon became apparent that the rest of the puzzle was going to be decidedly trickier.  The pieces were either “water” or “fish bits” and in each category, the pieces were seemingly indistinguishable from each other.  The Zen-like calm slowly transformed into very un-Zen-like frustration, and after a few weeks of limited progress, and a need to reclaim the dining room table, I gave up.  I had been beaten. By a bloody jigsaw.

My nemesis is still there, on the shelf, taunting me to have another go, and for now, I’m resisting. Until then, I’ll dream of the moment of putting that last carp-themed piece into place, then, taking an inordinate amount of joy smashing that bastard back into tiny bits again.