Here’s why jigsaws might just leave you in pieces...

Fiona has a bone to pick with a certain English map-maker whose invention may have deprived her of a proper sense of direction

Never start a jigsaw. That way lies ruin. It is the waste of whole days. Time that could be better spent digging and weeding, or washing and dusting. The world’s biggest jigsaw has half a million pieces. You would have to have an awfully big board and a lifetime to spare for that. The one I am working on is a mere 500-piece offering. It features horses in a field. One is black, the other is brown, and they are grazing. Lots of sky, lots of grass, oh dear...

In the morning I get the outside done. Which takes just under an hour. I then drag myself away. To answer emails, have a sandwich and catch up on admin. The mistake is going back into the room to find that envelope. And there it is, tempting me like Satan.

So I sit down and find one piece. Well you have to, don’t you? Then another, and another. And, hey-ho, it is nearly tea-time. There is no doubt this is an addictive hobby.

Jigsaws are harmless, but they are compulsive. And jigsaw sales are soaring. They went down a bomb during the Great Depression of the 1920s and 30s. And in these lockdown times they can certainly help to pass a day.

Is that good or bad? As someone famously said: ‘the killing of time is the worst of murders’. I look it up. I have become a dissectologist.

Let me explain. The first jigsaw puzzles were made in 1760 by an English map-maker called John Spilsbury. His diagrams of the British Empire were produced for educational purposes. They were chopped into small pieces and called ‘Dissected Maps’. A hundred years later and they became jigsaw puzzles. Don’t ask me why, because I do not think they were cut by a jigsaw. What I have been able to find out, however, is that there is a club for people like me. The BCD, or Benevolent Confraternity of Dissectologists, was founded in 1985. It is where puzzle enthusiasts can come together to share.

Because jigsaws are among the world’s most popular table games. They keep the brain active and they are recyclable – in that they can be passed on to someone else. But they can be dangerous. Remember that Laurel and Hardy film where one of them is so caught up in a jigsaw he misses his own wedding? In the meantime, the main thing is not to drop any pieces on the floor. If that happens it is highly

Don’t drop a piece. If this happens it’s highly likely that one of the MacNaughties will absent-mindedly eat it as he passes by...

likely that one of the MacNaughties will absent-mindedly eat it as he passes by. Because anything on the floor is fair game. It is theirs by rights, you understand.

With a herculean effort I pull myself away from the table and head outside. To the field where Trickie and Hector are happily grazing. Remember them? They eventually came back into the paddock. And this time I do manage to get a picture...

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