I know this might seem a bit “sad”, but a favourite hobby of my wife and I is doing jigsaws. We have always liked doing jigsaws – when we looked at it psychologically, we were both bought up by parents who liked doing jigsaws, so I presume we have inherited this hobby somewhere along the line.

These days, with a three year old daughter, we don’t seem to have much spare time, but like other families up and down the land, we always have a jigsaw out at Christmas! This prompted me to write this review after spending Boxing Day frantically looking for puzzle pieces. Our favourite type of jigsaws at the moment are the “Wasgij” style puzzles. For those of you who have never heard of these, let me explain.

There have been 7 of these style puzzles made so far, available from all good “puzzle” retailers. Unlike conventional jigsaw puzzles where the picture on the front of the box clearly shows the picture you have to make, the “Wasgij” puzzles are more tricky. The picture on the box is always a cartoon-style picture of various characters doing something, eg. at a wedding, airport or camp site. What the expert puzzler has to do is make up the picture which the people in the picture are looking at. For example, the airport one, the people on the box are looking at an old dilapidated plane trying to take off.

Just in time for Christmas, the manufacturers of these puzzles invented a new concept for those of us who have got tired of this format. They now call them “Destiny Wasgijs”. This time, with echoes of Harry Potter here, the puzzler has to make the picture which is the same picture, but in the future. The new one, “Destiny Wasgij 1” is of dozens of schoolchildren having their school dinner. The puzzler has to make the picture of a school re-union, which has very humorous consequences.

Over the years, we have developed some top tips for jigsaw puzzling, wh
ich you may be interested in:

Top Tip 1
********
Separate the edge pieces and the rest of the pieces. Find the 4 corner pieces and then build up the border from those pieces.

Top Tip 2
********
Get some clear plastic sandwich bags, and use them to separate the rest of the pieces. They can usually be sorted into colours – say all the blue bits in one bag, all the green bits in another, etc. If you get bored of the puzzle then at least this has been done for you as you can put all the bags back in the box and shut the lid. If you carry on with the puzzle, the coloured sections can be built up easier as you are just looking through a few pieces at a time.

Top Tip 3
********
Watch your guard! If you are as determined as us at wanting to complete the puzzle by yourself without the help of anyone else, nothing annoys us more than someone walking up to the puzzle and place the 4 tricky pieces which you have spent days looking for within 5 seconds. If you don’t mind other people helping you, then this is OK, as sod’s law dictates that someone will indeed do that.

Top Tip 4
********
Start with the bottom of the puzzle and work your way up to the top. Usually the hard bit is at the top, eg. blue sky and more blue sky. This way, you will have fewer pieces left to choose from.

Top Tip 5
********
Think spatially! It’s interesting, as my other half, when puzzling, brings a feminine approach to jigsaws – she studies the colours and shades of the puzzle to find the pieces. She will be heard saying “I need a cerise piece with a slight hint of magenta” .However, I look at it from a man’s point of view, and go for shapes, rather than colours, and will be heard saying “I need a knobbly bit with 3 inn-y bits.” Just goes to show, teamwork is the best option.

Top Tip 6
********
When all your hard work is over and before you break
up the finished article again, take a photograph of it (especially if it is a “Wasgij” style puzzle) and put it in the box with the pieces. Obviously this shows you what the finished puzzle looks like, and also if you are going to sell your puzzles on at car boot sales, etc., this shows everyone that the pieces are all there.

Hope you enjoyed this insight into puzzling – enjoy your puzzles!