In Defense of Jigsaw Puzzles

Jigsaw Puzzles are FUN.

There, I said it.

I’m talking about that very same puzzle that you always dreaded at your Grandparent’ house over Christmas break. That one in a dusty box underneath the bed in the guest room that is scary to go into alone. Yes, that puzzle. That puzzle deserves better treatment than the back of the house and I’m going to tell you why.

Puzzles are fun, engaging, brain-building, relationship-strengthening, long-lasting pieces of art that you get to complete as a team. They offer a real sense of accomplishment and can serve as symbols as quality time spent together long after they are finished.

Today I will defend the value of table jigsaw puzzles and forever rid them of the unfair association with boredom at grandparent’s houses and rainy days with nothing to do.

But before I do that, a history lesson. I bet you didn’t know that puzzles have been around since 1767. That same jigsaw puzzle of a dog catching a ball in a swimming pool that you just ordered on Amazon descends directly from a toy that has been around since before the United States was officially a country. The creation of the first puzzle is credited to John Spilsbury who dissected a wooden map into pieces that could be reassembled. Their initial purpose was to teach children geography but they soon came to prominence as a leisure activity for the upper class. Within 8 years of being introduced to the United States, puzzles exploded into a full-blown craze that has ebbed and flowed ever since 1900. During the COVID-19 pandemic, premium puzzle maker Ravensburger has seen sales increase 370%. Americans are back to devouring puzzles as they did 100+ years ago and after this article, you’ll understand why.

Rocco here descends from a long line of puzzles stretching back to the 1700s

For the first 24 years of my life, I had no interest in puzzles. Even when I was in Middle School and my dad and brother sought to complete a majestic 2000 piecer, I had no interest in assisting with the project. I wrote off their efforts as a waste of time and scoffed while walking past the work-in-progress to go play video games (how wrong I was). In the last year, I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve helped complete over 3000 pieces of puzzle during the last month in quarantine and my housemates (my family and GF) waited no more than three days to layout another 2000 piece goliath. Through this experience, I’ve come to the realization that puzzles are NOT only for the old, the bored, or the inspirationless, as previously thought. But rather, puzzles are engaging activities that can be played and won by all, build and strengthen social bonds, develop and enhance mental cognition, and serve as beautiful wall art to display to visitors for years to come.

Last completed puzzle so you know I’m not lying

Over the years, at least in my own household, puzzles have been passed over for board games such as Monopoly, Battleship, Settlers of Catan, or whatever new fancy board game has hit the market. This is a glaring oversight on the part of the activity selector for a number of reasons.

Board games, while normally quite fun, have distinct drawbacks: they can only host a limited number of players, they pit you against your friends and your family, and they require your complete undivided attention to participate.

In practically any Board Game, there is a limit on the number of players who can be involved at one time. This, if you have enough friends/ family, will potentially exclude some of the people you are with, causing friction within the social circle and potentially heated debates about who gets to play and when. Puzzles, on the other hand, are a capacity-less team sport. As many people as you have in your home is as many people as you can have working on a puzzle at once.

Not only do Board Games create friction before you begin, they also have the potential to create fission in the group after things have wrapped up. Board Games have clear winners and losers, and some people really HATE to lose. This fact puts game players at risk of creating an uncomfortable environment after the game has completed. There is little worse than finishing a game of Monopoly and spending the rest of the afternoon giving each other the silent treatment because someone created a derivative on Boardwalk, and cashed out to win the game. Puzzles do not face this issue. Puzzles are non-competitive. This means that while working on a puzzle, or even when finishing a puzzle, everyone who has put a piece in or sit at the table during its completion feels some sense of accomplishment. There are no sore losers in puzzles, which guarantees no awkward moments after one has been finished.

The final drawback to board games is that there is a significant barrier to entry to play most games. At the very least, you must sign up to be actively participating in the entirety of the game, which some people simply do not care to do. Many of my friends would rather just hang out while not feeling excluded from the main activity of the group. However, you throw a puzzle out on the table and you have guaranteed everyone around you low effort engagement. If you get a text or have to go to the bathroom, you are not impeding the progress of others by stepping away for a few minutes. For those who don’t want to participate, only to hang out, puzzles serve as a central gathering point for your group of choice. There is no pressure to do anything but sit around the table while your friends or family are working.

Please don’t interpret this as a crusade against Board Games, but where Board Games fall short, puzzles excel.

Not only do puzzles offer a superior group experience than board games, but the kind of quality time that is facilitated by working on a puzzle together is also a phenomenon I haven’t seen replicated elsewhere. It’s no secret that as technology has progressed, the amount of focused quality time that the average person spends with their family and friends has gone down significantly. Even my own family experiences the cliche of one person talking while the rest of us surf around on our phones, unable to focus on the conversation at hand. This is not something I’ve seen while working on a puzzle. When puzzling, everyone tends to be focused on what is in front of them but also able to maintain a conversation. It is a unique type of engagement that keeps you in the present but also permits a full conversation at the same time.

That conversation can be about anything, but for those with difficult relationships with their family, the puzzle provides a friendly, low stake topic of conversation. I would consider my relationship with my family strong, but it is still great to have something that everyone is on the same level to talk about. You can talk about a section that is difficult, a piece that is weird or “missing” or how you feel about the graphic being constructed. There is truly endless banter to be had! It feels counterintuitive, but a puzzle can yield hours of conversation. Puzzles facilitate the type of light touch connection that is otherwise bulldozed by technology by providing a source of focus at a level where conversations are still manageable.

Like most uses of time that aren’t directly tied to your profession, there is a “so what” argument to be made against the completion of time-consuming jigsaw puzzles. There is some truth to the comparison to masturbating: it feels productive but nothing is actually being accomplished. I get that, but I disagree, and for once, the science seems to back me up. The benefits to solving jigsaw puzzles include but are not limited to stronger short term memory, increased problem-solving skills, increased personal productivity and elevation of mood (not so sure about this one, spending minutes searching for one piece among thousands is not exactly my ideal time, but I don’t argue with science). That small sense of satisfaction experienced after putting a piece together may feel like a cheap dopamine hit, but real gray matter development is happening in the background, proving puzzles to be a valuable leisure time activity.

After you’ve spent hours, weeks, or potentially months building a bond with your friends and family and making yourself smarter in the process, puzzles leave you with one last gift to remind you of the goods times had. For a small fee, you can frame and hang that Magnum Opus on the wall to tout your accomplishment to all of those who venture through your front door. My dad, a perfect example of this, has been bringing people down to my brother’s room to show off the puzzle they completed together for years, and I hope he continues. It’s a beautiful piece of art that also happened to take weeks to complete and strengthened his relationship with his youngest son. A completed puzzle is a wonderful thing to hang on a wall, and a classic two-for-one deal when you consider the original motivation to purchase: a time killer for rainy days.

Right now I’ve got 1600 more pieces of an intricate flower painting requiring my attention so I leave you with a suggestion: if quarantine is wearing on you, and you are at your housemates' throats with pointless bickering and small quarrels, grab a 1500 piece Ravensberger puzzle and see what that does to your home chemistry. If your experience is anything like mine, it’ll be the best purchase you’ve made in a minute.

Current view of our Dining Room Table

P.S. If anyone knows someone who works at Ravensberger and wants to get me sponsored, please slide into my DMs on Twitter or shoot me an email at [email protected].

Subscribe now