Write Team: Our engagement with puzzles

Are you a dissectologist?

Although the word does bring to mind distressing memories of a high school Biology lab, it actually describes a person who enjoys doing puzzles, usually jigsaw puzzles.

The first jigsaw puzzle was created in London by engraver John Spilsbury. He glued maps to wood and then cut them apart along the lines of the countries. These early puzzles were called “dissections,” hence the name “dissectologist.”

Solving puzzles is good for our brains, and there are so many different kinds from which to choose. Besides jigsaw, there are brain teasers, word search, Sudoku, logic, crossword, Rubik’s Cube and 3D puzzles, to name a few.

I like word puzzles. Wordle, Word Blossom, Quordle and Octordle are some online word games that I enjoy. I’ve even taken up French Wordle and French Quordle. Those four years of high school French classes have finally proven to be somewhat useful. I also find word search puzzle books to be relaxing.

But I do not enjoy working on jigsaw puzzles.

I see pictures on social media of elaborate puzzles that friends have completed, and I am so impressed – 1,000 similarly shaded pieces of sky and water that when completed, create a splendid outdoors scene suitable for framing.

A good friend of mine loves doing puzzles. She finds the process of sorting pieces by color and whether they are edges or innies and outies to be extremely satisfying. The entire procedure, from beginning to end, brings her order and peace.

It gives me a headache.

Jigsaw puzzles make me crazy. I get frustrated when the pieces don’t fit and resort to forcing a piece into a spot where I think it should go. I tell myself that it’s close enough.

But of course, it isn’t. Puzzle pieces must fit exactly, and there is just one correct place for every single piece.

I grow impatient with jigsaw puzzles. I enjoy many other creative activities that require patience. I’ve spent months hand quilting a pieced quilt. I enjoy doing embroidery and paper crafting. I am a fairly strong seamstress.

Maybe it’s just that I like options. If I want to embroider a pink flower rather than the suggested blue, I can. The length of my quilt stitches is up to me. I decide what stain to use when refinishing a piece. When I write, there is an endless supply of words. My creative projects become unique. And I make it all fit together, however I want.

That system doesn’t work with jigsaw puzzles.

We all know what happens when we push something or someone where they don’t belong. Forcing anything into the wrong spot won’t work. And it throws off the rest of our life puzzle. Everything else around the incorrect placement feels the strain of a misguided placement. It isn’t good at all.

So I’m leaving the jigsaw puzzles for my more talented and patient friends.

But if the correct letter combination ever pops up on Word Blossom, I’ll happily take all those points for using the word “dissectologist.”

Karen Roth is a semiretired librarian/educator living in Ottawa. She can be reached at dbarichello@shawmedia.com .