Why everyone’s talking about... Jigsaws
SINCE lockdown started, sales of jigsaws have soared, with one manufacturer reporting a 370 per cent rise. Best-sellers include a 1,000-piece version of a Van Gogh wheat field landscape, and I see that similar puzzles have become ‘big family entertainment’ for Barack Obama, his wife and their daughters.
They are not the only famous enthusiasts, or‘ d is sec to log ists ’. Others include Microsoft’ s Bill Gates, former rock hellraiser Ronnie Wood, and hip DJ Fatboy Slim. Even the Queen is a paid-up member of the British Jigsaw Puzzle Library. Her sister, Princess Margaret, was less keen. After her death, 1,700 puzzles were found in her attic… all unopened.
So can we piece together some history?
They were invented around 1760 when British cartographer John Spilsbury mounted a map on hardwood and cut out each country. These ‘dissected maps’ were a teaching tool, then a pastime of the rich, mentioned by Jane Austen in Mansfield Park. They were later named jigsaws after the tool which made cutting the wood easier was invented in the 19th Century.
And some stats?
The most expensive sold for £14,600 in 2005. Size-wise, the record-breaker had 551,232 pieces and was built in a Vietnamese stadium in 2011. Dave Evans, from Weymouth, made the largest hand-cut wooden jigsaw – 40,000 pieces – even though it collapsed just as he put the final piece in place. The largest commercial puzzle has 52,110 pieces and covers 150 sq ft. In 2016, Norfolk dissectologist Graham Andrew almost finished a 33,600- piece monster when he realised four pieces were missing.
We all know that frustration!
Indeed. That’s why fan Andy Hunt set up a business, Jigsaw Doctor, that will custommake missing pieces, from £11 each, based on the surrounding image. Some charity shops even employ volunteers to check for missing pieces – so never say your job is boring! But some puzzles are meant to be unsolvable. In 2007, Christopher Monckton, an aristocratic former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, offered £1.2 million to anyone who could solve his 256-piece Eternity 2, which has so many combinations, the world’s most powerful computer working until the death of the universe would be unlikely to crack it. Big surprise: the prize went unclaimed. Incidentally, Obama is not the only US President to enjoy jigsaws. It’s reported that Donald Trump boasted how smart he was after completing a puzzle in just eight months – when it said ‘5-7 years’ on the box.
Very droll…