Does jigsaw puzzle solving involve problem solving skills?
Drishti Tyagi
A Quality and Process Management professional with 10+yrs in IT industry and an independently practicing children's Library Educator.
Solving jigsaw puzzles has become a sort of ritual in our house these days. My daughter and I have been solving 300, 500, and 1000 piece puzzles in the last few months. We have created a sort of flow of how to go about solving puzzles in a way that it is faster and easier every time we work on a new puzzle.
#Strategy - As with any problem solving, we have our strategy all figured out.?
#Breakdown - Now we go for the section that has easily identifiable features and start searching for pieces that make it. This is similar to breaking the problem (here the image) into smaller manageable pieces and work on each piece one at a time.
#FocusandDetail - The minute we focus on a section we start noticing the details like the shape, the colour and the pattern that click together and make sense. We are able to select the pieces and keep building.
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#Keepatit - Sometimes we do end up getting a few pieces in the wrong places but we keep at it till the right piece fits. We keep testing out different pieces and sometimes just changing the orientation of the same piece makes it fit right in.
#Teamwork - Most of the time having multiple players is more fun. When I am stuck at a point or just unable to see the piece that is just right in front of me (it has happened, my daughter will vouch for it), my daughter just walks in, has a look and bam places the piece in its right place with an exasperated remark of "Really Mamma!". The collaboration really works in speeding things up and bringing a new perspective every time.
#Celebrate - Nothing is more satisfying than putting that last piece of puzzle in place and seeing the whole solved image. And then we celebrate …How? By opening a new puzzle of course!??
A side note: We do not have photographic memory and no we are not super-fast at solving puzzles but we love going through the process and solving them nonetheless. ??