Teams race to finish their puzzles at Puzzlepalooza in Peterborough

Is puzzling a competitive sport?

Well, there’s a World Jigsaw Puzzle Federation, and they hold the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship every year in Valladolid, Spain, where the fastest puzzlers in the world compete.

More importantly for this column, the Peterborough Recreation Department has started to hold its own quarterly competitive puzzling session, called Puzzlepalooza. And finally, there is a sport I am good at!

On Thursday, I attended the fourth Peterborough Puzzlepalooza, and my team of four walked out the first-place winners. It was my third time competing in the event, and second win. (In the other two competitions, my team took second place in one, and didn’t attend the fourth.)

My team has been slightly different each time I’ve participated. Having heard of the competition initially, I roped two members of my writing group into participating with me. This time, I’m competing with friends Courtney Cox, Lori Pedrick and Bill Biss.

It’s more thrilling than you might assume from the words “jigsaw puzzling competition.”

First of all, there’s strategy. I went into my first competition with a plan. Forget doing the edges – a common-enough starting point for most puzzles. I was looking at colors and patterns. After all, I wasn’t doing this puzzle by myself at a kitchen table. I was working with other people, and there was definitely the opportunity to get into each other’s way. As soon as we saw the image, we sectioned it out, so that each of us would be working on something different.

That worked well in the other two competitions I’ve been in, but this time, when we flipped over the puzzle, the image was of a collage of succulent plants in heart-shaped bowls. While there were some distinct patches of color, for the most part, there were similar textures and a lot of green everywhere.

Time to switch it up.

Two of my team started working on the border, while Courtney – who has been with me to every other competition so far – and I started pulling what colors and textures we could. A butterfly and caterpillar, spots of red and pink.

It feels like it comes together slowly, but it’s a smaller puzzle than the previous competitions – 300 pieces rather than 500 – and by the time my team put in its last piece and Courtney jumped up to ring the bell, the time read 38 minutes and 5 seconds. We were the first to finish.

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A little over 10 minutes later, a team of two, Suzanne Robinson and Nisa Simila, ring in for second, at 49 minutes and 42 seconds.

It’s jigsaw puzzling, but it’s competitive jigsaw puzzling, so by the time the image starts to come together, you can feel the effects of the adrenaline. Your body can get hot, nerves rise. Yes, over a jigsaw puzzle.

As someone who hasn’t participated in competitive sports since high school, this is definitely my niche.

I have always loved jigsaw puzzles. Since I was a child putting together depictions of “The Little Mermaid” and getting Thomas Kinkade landscapes for Christmas, they’ve always been something I’ve been good at. Nowadays, it’s a more serious hobby for me. I have opinions on puzzle manufacturers and am an avid user of the Jaffrey Public Library’s free puzzle exchange, always on the hunt for something new.

“I’ve finally found my team sport,” said Robinson, who described puzzling as “Putting order into one corner of the world.”

Perhaps that’s the appeal.

Julia Chidester, a program coordinator for Peterborough Recreation Department, said she got the idea for the competition from a Facebook group for women in parks and recreation to share ideas. The Thursday night competition hosted 15 people, and has had as many as 22 participants. Chidester said even though she’s not a puzzler herself, she wanted to make sure there’s a diversity in programming, and is looking to grow the event. Some surrounding parks departments have also picked up the event, and now hold their own speed puzzling competitions, including Milford, Amherst and Greenfield.

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Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.

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