:: Eric Shamblen’s Puzzle Blog ::

The 17th Annual Jigsaw Puzzle Contest was held at the Winter Carnival in St. Paul, Minnesota last Sunday.  This year, 50 four-person teams paid the $40 entrance fee to participate in the contest, which involves assembling a 500-piece puzzle, usually within 45 minutes.

The prize? $120.  Not worth it, you say.  The contestants say, oh yes it is, and some teams practice for months before the competition.  Want to compete in your own local contest?  Here are some tips from the Minnesotan experts:

• The first important task is to form the border. Before the competition, some teams time their members’ ability to solve the edges, and the fastest person is the designated border solver for the contest. With the border completed, the middle becomes much easier to solve.
• Everyone should be working on their own section of the puzzle, so that they can focus more easily, and so there’s less likelihood of a fight breaking out over two people grabbing for the same piece.
• It’s faster to assemble the puzzle in clusters. Rather than looking at an individual piece and trying another individual piece to match it, look for distinct, recognizable common features (i.e., red pieces, pieces of a person’s face, pieces of a house), and put those pieces together first.
• When you get to a point where you’re about to pull your hair out in frustration, swap places with another teammate. Fresh eyes might be able to see different connections.

Tuesday, January 29 was National Puzzle Day. Did you know about it? Did your boss give you the day off, or at least clip out the daily crossword from the newspaper for you to solve on your coffee break? Didn’t think so.

The problem is, even though it is celebrated every January 29, it is not an “official” holiday, which would require an act of Congress. So please, write your Congressman or Senator, and let’s get them doing something useful for a change!

Want some ideas on how you can celebrate next year? Here’s how various places across the country marked this clearly sacred, but mostly unrecognized day:

• At the St. Cloud, Minnesota Public Library, children drew pictures and the staff turned them into jigsaw puzzles. 
• In the Inman Mills Activity Room at the Headquarters Library in Spartanburg, South Carolina, children and their families were invited for an evening of brainteasers, puzzles and games.
• At the Monon Center in Noblesville, Indiana, there was a special exhibit just for National Puzzle Day.
• At the Southwest Branch of the Brown County Library in Green Bay, Wisconsin, not only did some undisclosed event happen at 9:45 AM, but it happened again at 10:30 AM. They celebrated twice in a 45-minute period, people!

So next year, put on your puzzle t-shirt, and settle in with a couple of good collections of word searches and Sudokus. When your boss asks you the next day why you missed work, just say, “National Puzzle Day, man. National Puzzle Day.”

Attention readers in the New York area:  a new interactive exhibit at the Staten Island Children’s Museum opened this past weekend, and will be on display until May 4.  Entitled “Brain Teasers,” the exhibit includes 20 different riddles, puzzles and rope tricks, including a puzzle called “The Five Room House” that, according to the New York Daily News website, ”has never been solved.”

Puzzle aficionados will recognize that this is a bit of an understatement; the Five Room House is actually a classic example of an impossible puzzle — one that bears no solution. But don’t tell the kiddies!

For more on the Five Room House puzzle, why it is insolvable and how to cheat and solve it anyway, click here.