Flatland
An edge piece, a centerpiece, a piece of the sky, they've been solving them behind my back. It's been fifty-plus years since I solved one. I figured they were like stick shifts and pay telephones, relics of another time, but I was wrong.
When G told me C solved jigsaw puzzles, I dismissed it as an aberration, but when I mentioned this fact to D, he told me that K also solved them. When I abruptly changed subjects in a conversation with J going from one about writing to one about puzzles, he looked disturbed, his face contorted. I watched as a light (awareness) rose from him. I watched as his face resumed a more normal countenance. I saw it when he got it. “Do you solve them,” I said. He hesitated, “No, but M does.”
Five hundred-piece puzzles are the most popular based on my tiny sample. And homes with cats or dogs must take extra precautions while solving them.
It's not just famous scenes with mountains, trees, and butterfly wings, but movie posters like one C recently solved with ET crossing the face of the moon.
D once purchased two puzzles for K as a Christmas gift, not knowing that the two he chose were two she had previously solved. It caused some marital discord, but it was minor, according to D.
C solves hers on the kitchen table, surrounded by various containers to separate and categorize the pieces.
K solves hers on a coffee table, in the living room, under the tutelage of their four dogs, Wally, Molly, Cody, and Boo, an aggregate of 270 pounds, the same dogs that are sometimes responsible for teeth marks in pieces. If a piece is damaged, the puzzle is discarded, and the dogs hear the bite of her voice.
It's common knowledge among proficient solvers that sometimes it's wise to start from the outside and work your way in, and other times from the middle out. C said the puzzle-solving is tactile, visual, meditative, and fun. Jigsaw puzzles are like the pieces of your life; putting them together is living.