National Speed Puzzling Championship Attracts Top Competitors
Speed Puzzling Championship Tests Teamwork and Strategy in Atlanta
This weekend, the fastest jigsaw puzzlers in the land will be in Atlanta to compete in the National Speed Puzzling Championship. Reporter Leslie Eiler Thompson helps us put the pieces together.
A tough team competition is about to begin in a Minnesota ballroom.
Oh, God. Here we go. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Ah. Come on, you got it, got it, you got it.
One hundred teams of four players rip open bags with identical 500-piece puzzles. They've never seen the puzzle before. It's a collage of buildings and icons.
OK, bottom towards me or bottom towards you? Bottom towards you because you're doing border. Yep. That's fine.
This was at the St. Paul Winter Carnival last year, where competitors do a jigsaw puzzle as fast as they can. They have to know their team members' strengths to build their solving strategy. Here's Margaret Long with a team called What The Flip.
So for me, I get stressed out opening the box, so I leave that to somebody else. But I'm happy to take, like, a giant building or the sky with a gradient, so we try to kind of claim the sections of the image that we're most likely to be successful.
These puzzlers call themselves puzzle people. There have been competitions for decades with formalized tournaments held as early as 1980. Jigsaw puzzling has grown substantially since the pandemic, with new organizations and websites founded in the last several years.
Tammy McLeod: The switch to a lot of communication going online through Zoom, for example, enabled Zoom competitions.
This is Tammy McLeod. She's a Guinness Book of World Records holder for speed puzzling and helped found the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association in 2020. It organizes the annual competition happening this weekend. For puzzlers like her, it's not just the adrenaline rush that keeps them going.
Tammy McLeod: I like putting things in order, sorting out problems. Jigsaw puzzles are kind of a natural fit for that because everything's jumbo to start with, and I like to sort it out and make sense of it.
And many are finding friendship and community. Speed puzzling events are popping up in restaurants and bars across the country.
Back in the Minnesota ballroom, the team called Puzzle! At The Disco wins first place with a time of 16 minutes and 38 seconds. Seventy seconds later, the team two tables down puts in its last piece.
Second - second place Sarah. Let's go. We love it. Yes.
The national competition in Atlanta this weekend will have teams putting together 500- and 1,000-piece puzzles. For NPR News, I'm Leslie Eiler Thompson.
