Author: Animatopica

When you go shopping for a jigsaw puzzle you look at the pictures on the boxes, obviously. We all have our preferences, some like famous buildings, animals, landscapes while the young ones are more attracted to funny cartoon characters. Next you look at the difficulty level to decide if you’re up to it or if the recipient of your gift would be. The question is how do you judge the quality of a puzzle? What makes a puzzle good and what makes it bad? Let’s have a look at the qualities of a good puzzle.

 

Wood or cardboard

Definitely, most of the jigsaw puzzles you’ll find at a store are made of cardboard, but people who are really into this prefer those made of wood. After all, centuries ago when jigsaw puzzles were invented they were made out of wood and they were not for fun, they were used to teach children geography.

Those who prefer puzzles made of wood, well plywood, say this is more resistant and it can be cut into more varied shapes than cardboard.

A different type of material with magnetic coating is used for spherical puzzles, describing the Earth or other planets. The thin magnetic layer helps the pieces to the metallic globe.

 

Quality of the image

When you look at the image of a jigsaw puzzle there are two aspects that need to be considered. One of them is pretty subjective – whether you like it or not. If you study the items on display at the store you will see many landscape images and you’d say those are most popular. Oddly enough, they are not. People prefer jigsaw puzzles with some characters and action on them. Those fly off the shelves and you get stuck with castles, sleepy rivers and forests in various shades of green.

Speaking of shades, those are very important when it comes to the level of difficulty of a puzzles.

A jigsaw puzzle for younger children need to have vivid color and the various parts of the image need to be in different colors so the kid can figure out easier which piece goes where. There’s no confusion when Winnie the Pooh is yellow with red shirt, while Eeyore is purple.

On the other hand puzzles meant for grownups use various shades of a color so you need a good eye to tell them apart. The grass will be a lighter green than the leaves of the trees who go the whole range from light to dark green. That’s what adults who love puzzles expect, a challenge, something to keep them guessing. If the puzzle is too easy where’s the fun?

 

Is the number of pieces indicative of the difficulty level?

 

The first thing you’ll check out on the box is the number of pieces in the jigsaw puzzle. One meant for toddlers might have as few as 4 pieces and this is how it’s supposed to be as you don’t want the kid’s introduction to the marvelous world of jigsaw puzzles to be a frustrating experience. As children grow, the number of pieces increases.

However, if you’re looking at puzzles meant for grow-ups, a 3,000 pieces one is not necessarily more difficult than a 1,000 pieces one. Sure, the former has more pieces to sift through, but it all depends on the image and how well the pieces fit together. An image with various colors is easier to deal with for a keen-eyed adult than one in very similar shades. It’s way easier to put together a field with colorful flowers than the walls of a huge castle in various shades of white.

It is impossible to say which one is better as it is a matter of personal taste.

 

Shape and quality of the pieces

 

There’s no doubt about it. A good jigsaw puzzle needs to be made out of thick cardboard so the pieces are not easily damaged. If the little knobs get bent or fall off, the puzzle will be ruined. This is very important when you buy jigsaw puzzles for your children. Those puzzles will be in your house for many years to come and the kids will take them out from time to time to play with them. A thin cardboard cannot withstand heavy usage and the children will be disappointed.

If you’re the type of adult that only cares about solving the puzzle once this might not be important, although people with this hobby will prefer good quality pieces because this is a passion for them and floppy pieces of thin cardboard are blasphemy to them.

Another important aspect is how well do the pieces fit together. Jigsaw puzzles are cut using a special machine called die. A top quality machine will cut the pieces to precision, without rough edges and without tearing the layers of the cardboard, or, God forbid, parts of the image on top. Using a good machine ensures that the pieces fit together perfectly, without gaps or having to force them together. Anyone who’s ever done a jigsaw puzzle knows just how frustrating it can be when you discover two pieces that might fit together in a certain spot and you don’t know which the good one is as both are a bit wobbly. Likewise, when you buy a good quality puzzle you know that forcing the pieces together is bad. You might be able to do it if you try hard enough but you’re obviously making a mistake which you’re going to regret lately.

In a good quality jigsaw puzzle the pieces need to slide gently in place and stay there.

 

• D vs. 2-D

Those who care for tradition certainly prefer 2-D puzzles for that’s how they are supposed to be, right?  For people with this hobby much of the pleasure lies in putting all the pieces on the coffee table, sorting them by colors, finding the edge pieces – there’s a whole art to it amateurs wouldn’t understand.

However, over the past decades 3-D jigsaw puzzles have grown in popularity. Who wouldn’t like to recreate the Tower of London or the Sydney Opera House and then have the puzzles decorate the shelves of their living room. Although they are sold as jigsaw puzzles, the 3-D models do not require the same skills as solving a traditional puzzle, it’s not a matter of finding the right piece but rather of following the instructions. You also need to be good with your hands and make sure you don’t bend the thin cardboard when piecing together the puzzle.

Top range 3-D puzzles are also made out of wood and you can build a pirate ship or an airplane, which brings them closer to Lego sets rather than traditional puzzle.

Crystal 3-D puzzles are mainly aimed at adults and come in a variety of models, cats, dogs or pretty birds. These are also meant to be kept as decorations once solved. Don’t be fooled by their name though, the crystalline pieces are usually nothing but translucent plastic.

Which is best of all these models once again depends on what you prefer, testing your eyes and your brain with a traditional 2-D model or your dexterity with a 3-D model you have to assemble rather than solve.

 

Educational or recreational puzzles

Most adults care about the beauty of the image and the challenge a jigsaw puzzle presents as for them it is a recreational activity. A puzzle needs to be fun and relaxing for them.

On the other hand, there’s a whole range of educational puzzles and parents go crazy for them. The kid thinks he’s getting a new toy, while the parent secretly rejoices the little one will learn geography with the huge map of the world puzzle. Other types of educational puzzles are meant to teach children numbers, basic arithmetic or foreign languages. With such products, buyers are more likely to choose based on the educational value. If you had to choose between a puzzle with the map of the United States where the pieces only bear the name of each state while the other also has the name of the capital city and the state emblem which would you pick?

Like with regular puzzles, when you buy such an item you need to evaluate the quality of the pictures or the clarity of the contours if the kid is to learn where each US state sits on the map. The quality of the pieces is essential for this type of jigsaw puzzles as the child will be using it frequently and it’s the sort of toy that gets passed along to younger siblings. Sometimes it is impossible to assess the quality of the pieces, but if it’s a flimsy cardboard that breaks easily it’s probable you won’t be buying another product from the same manufacturer.

For educational puzzles, those made out of wood are preferable for they’re sure to last longer.

 

A good jigsaw puzzle needs to bring pleasure and this comes from the beauty of the image as well as from the quality of the pieces it is made of. If you’re simply looking for a fun activity on a rainy weekend a cardboard one will be fine, but connoisseurs will always prefer a nice puzzle made with layered wood pieces. In the end, the quality of a puzzle depends on what you make of it. Any type of jigsaw puzzle is good as long as it makes you happy!

Your boss won’t probably appreciate you playing some Mahjong Solitaire during working hours, but solving puzzles is much more than a pastime. Solving puzzles is not a waste of time as they provide a whole range of benefits, including making you more productive, which your boss should appreciate.

 

Solving Puzzles Keeps Your Brain Fit

We’re used to seeing people going to the gym or jogging in the park to keep in shape, so why should we treat our brain any different? Most of the food we give our brain is passive entertainment, like scrolling on social media or watching TV. That’s junk food for the brain. Puzzles of any kind get the brain moving and sweating until it finds a solution. All the brain cells involved with logical thinking and creativity are fired up when you try to complete a puzzle and that’s the equivalent of spending half an hour on the treadmill or doing push-ups.

Solving puzzles activates both hemispheres of your brain, the left one controls logical thinking, while the right one is responsible for creativity.

 

Prevents Cognitive Decline

Even an old-fashioned jigsaw puzzle is a great workout for the brain. Analyzing the pieces’ shapes and colors activates the occipital lobe and increases cognitive function. A 2018 study proved that volunteers doing puzzles on a regular basic had measurable improvements in episodic memory, working memory, reasoning, visual perception and processing speed.

Crossword puzzles and number-based puzzles play an important role in preventing age-related memory loss. Volunteers between the ages of 50 and 93 who did puzzles every day scored better on tests designed to measure 14 types of cognition.

Another study discovered dementia sufferers who solved puzzles started losing their memory 2.5 years later than patients who did not put their brains to work.

 

Improves Problem Solving Abilities

Riddles, sliding puzzles, disentanglement puzzles require critical thinking and also lateral thinking, which can best be described as thinking outside the box. This is essential to learning how to deal with new problems.

When you’re trying to solve a riddle, for instance, you have to formulate a theory and test it. If it doesn’t work you need to explore another hypothesis, while keeping in mind what was wrong with the first thing you tried.

Improved problem solving abilities are important for all adults, active or retired. While a professional will surely benefit from this, it is the elderly that profit most.

As people age it’s hard to cope with new problems. Just think how challenging figuring out how a mobile phone works is for the older generation. It’s a challenge they’ve never faced before, so improving their solving problems abilities helps them work out a solution easier.

 

Improves Creativity

Many puzzles look easy at first sight, until you realize just how deceptive the seemingly simple problem is. Using brute force and random guessing don’t work with solving most puzzles, unless you’re willing to waste many hours trying.

You need to get creative and analyze the problem from different angles. Take for instance riddles, which are notoriously deceptive and the answers require using logic as well as imagination.

Think of the riddle with the guy walking into a bar and asks for a glass of water. The bartender takes out a gun and points it at him. The customer thanks him and walks away. What was that all about? Assuming that neither of them was a maniac, you have to rack your brain to understand what water and guns have in common. The answer is hiccups, the guy had the hiccups and the bartender used the gun to scare him. This is just an example of how solving riddles helps you be more creative.

 

Better Concentration

Number-based puzzles increase concentration as they force the brain to keep track of various digits and see how they can be arranged to solve the problem. Doing a Sudoku requires a lot of concentration as you need to remember why a 3 cannot possibly be placed on that middle row, but neither can you put a 7 there. You cannot possibly write all that information down, the brain needs to learn to juggle with it.

The same goes for jigsaw puzzles as you need to remember where in the pile you might have seen that piece that you now realize it’s part of the dog’s nose. You need to focus on colors, shades and shapes, which requires a lot of concentration and attention to details.

 

Better Spatial and Visual Reasoning

Anyone who’s ever done a large 1,000 pieces puzzle can surely relate to this, that little gap for which you simply could not find the missing piece. Most players look around in a frenzied panic, hoping the piece is under the table or under the carpet, only to then accuse the makers they’ve sold them a box with missing pieces. As annoying as this situation might be, it’s a good exercise for the brain because simply looking for a piece with a certain shape forces your brain to scan and mentally compare all the pieces on the table against the one by now imprinted in your brain.

Crossword puzzles improve spatial reasoning because you need to keep in mind, literally, all the blank cells and the various possibilities at hand, again literally.

Experts say that improved spatial and visual reasoning will make you a better driver and also help you with a myriad of everyday tasks, like packing your bags in the most efficient way or making more room in a closet.

 

Boosts your IQ

Since solving puzzles improves your reasoning skills, memory, concentration and all sorts of mental abilities, it also raises your IQ. Now, don’t expect to become a genius overnight, but according to one study, spending half an hour a day doing whatever type of puzzle you fancy can boost your IQ by 4 percent.

 

Great relaxation technique

This might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but the state you enter while you’re deep into solving a puzzle is akin to meditation. Yes, on one hand you have to make your brain work at full capacity, but on the other hand you have to let it loose, because that’s the best way to arrive at an unexpected solution. If you want, it resembles the state of your brain right before you fall asleep and random thoughts go through your mind. This is way quite often this pre-sleep moment is when you discover the answer to a problem that’s been bugging you for days.

 

Relieves stress

When you’re concentrating on a puzzle you’re focused, completely focused on the task at hand. It might of course make you angry, very angry at some point, but the truth is that such an activity has a calming effect and is an excellent stress reliever. You can easily disconnect from all the stressful things in your life – what happened at work is forgotten, all the household chores waiting for you are ignored, even the argument with your partner seems irrelevant when you cannot figure out the solution to the puzzle in front of you.

 

Puts you in a better mood

If you try hard enough, sooner or later the puzzle will be completed and that’s when you feel that dopamine kick that follows every win, at any sort of game. Once you’re done, the feel-good hormone floods your brain and you instantly feel better. The harder the puzzle is the stronger the dopamine boost is.

You’ve accomplished something and you have every right to feel proud. Has it ever happened to you to take pictures of a completed puzzle to show your friends?

Demonstrating your mental abilities and your problem-solving skills is a great ego boost and will improve your self-confidence levels.

There are also physical benefits, not just psychological ones. Reducing your stress levels by solving puzzles can also lower your heart rate and blood pressure.

Long term, lower stress levels boost your immune system, so we could alter the old saying to one puzzle a day keeps the doctor away.

 

Boosts productivity

Next time your boss is on your case and warns you not to waste your time doing stupid puzzles you might want to show him this and explain all the benefits this activity brings. And this does include increased productivity as an employee with a sharp brain, great problem solving skills, superior concentration and whatnot will inevitably perform his job better. Training your think-outside-capacity will help you devise new solutions to problems and your work, and your boss will ultimately benefit from you ‘wasting’ time on a game.

Some companies have a dedicated gym room where the employees are encouraged to relieve some stress by running on the treadmill, but a table with some puzzles on it would also be beneficial, both for the employees and the company. And it would promote teamwork and better relationships between staff members.

It might be a while until business managers see the benefits in doing puzzles, but until then there’s nothing stopping you from doing a Sudoku on the subway or bringing a novelty puzzle to a party to challenge your friends.

They sell them in the toy aisle, yet puzzles are one of the best educational tools parents and educators can use to help children develop cognitive, motor, and even social skills. And keep them entertained at the same time. Here is a look at the main benefits of solving puzzles for children and how you can use these simple toys to help your kid’s little brain cells work faster and better.

 

Fine Motor Skills

Babies, toddlers, and even older children have trouble using their hands efficiently. The hands themselves are just fine, it’s the brain that doesn’t have enough experience to order muscles around. As an adult, when you pick up the toys you do it automatically because you’ve had decades of practice, the neural paths in your brain are well established and you can go over tomorrow’s schedule in your head while the hands perform a routine task.

For a baby, grabbing that toy is a monumental task as the brain tries to make sense of all the little buttons to push so that the fingers will bend and apply the required amount of force to get a hold of that cute plushie.

Solving jigsaw puzzles is an excellent way to train the brain and improve motor skills. Obviously, the puzzles need to be age-appropriate. There are puzzles designed especially for one-year-olds, with no more than four large pieces, pegged pieces which are easier to pick up.

You will have to show the baby how the thing works by assembling the pieces yourself. See what a pretty picture you have now that the pieces are put together? The child will be shocked to see the cute doggie disappear once you scramble the pieces and will be eager to put it back together.

Learning how to efficiently pick up the puzzle pieces will help the brain master the pincer grip and the benefits will be obvious once the child goes to school and it will be easier to learn how to hold the pen or the paintbrush.

 

Never start with a puzzle that has more than a few pieces as the child won’t be able to put it together and this will make them very frustrated. Remember that it’s supposed to be fun!

 

Shape Recognition

Your baby can barely tell his nose from his ears, but puzzles challenge the brain to deal with abstract concepts like shape, which the child will learn only in school. Think of the puzzles for babies that only require to find the place each picture goes. Some have wavy irregular shapes, while others are square and rhomboids. It will be years until the child learns what makes a square a square, but in the meantime his brain will archive the information that squares are different from rectangles. Doesn’t sound like much to you, but for a child that’s monumental.

Besides jigsaw puzzles, look for toys that require the child to find the correct hole in which to place a 3-D piece, like a cube or a sphere.

You can help your child learn even more by naming each shape he picks up and trace its outline with your finger.

 

Spatial Awareness

Space, the final frontier. Your toddler has been trying to conquer space since he was a wee little baby studying the world beyond the bars of his crib. For a baby, making it to the bedroom door is like our dream of going to Mars. And it is much more difficult for a child as his mind is not equipped to deal with such a challenge as it lacks even the most basic concepts like straight or curved line, beneath and above, left or right.

Your child’s brain is an empty slate and playing with a puzzle will help him fill it with valuable information.

Even if you give the child the two topmost pieces of a puzzle, he will still struggle to understand which goes to the left and which to the right. He will use the trial and error method until he finally understands how the two pieces fit together. That’s spatial awareness and it’s essential for navigating the world.

And you will be surprised just how easily a child learns to operate with concepts he doesn’t really understand. A child’s brain is like a big sponge ready to absorb information and file it in the appropriate area from which it can be retrieved as needed.

Obviously, bright colors and nice pictures help a child how to put together a puzzle, but try giving your kid a new one and you will be surprised to discover that the little one has figured out that a straight line cannot possibly fit in with an irregular one and it will take him less time to solve it. Puzzles and educational toys that use the same principle will teach the children not only about shapes but also about size. When a certain piece is too big to fit in an empty space the child makes a mental note on the big-small concept.

Consider a toy that requires the kid to place cubes of various sizes in the right slot. The kid will probably fumble with the pieces and try to squeeze in the largest cube in the smallest empty spot until he realizes this is impossible. This will help him later to evaluate the space beneath the bed to figure out whether he can hide in there or if the toy train can go under the coffee table.

Such information will be later used to actually navigate the world or at least the backyard.

 

Hand to eye coordination

Have you ever watched a child trying to get a spoonful of his favorite baby food? He can clearly see the bowl right in front of him and his hand is armed with the spoon. He’s probably holding it clumsily, at a weird angle, but the major challenge is getting the spoon in the bowl and then raise it to his mouth. Once again, for an adult, such a movement is fully automatic and you can easily pick at your food while watching TV.

Puzzles help a child improve hand to eye coordination and it doesn’t make a mess like trying to feed himself does. The eyes scan the pieces to find the right one and the hand is then ordered to be a darling and grab the piece and put it in its place.

Imagine there are three pieces left on the floor and the eyes have already decided on the square one. There’s a lot of effort required to point the hand in the right direction, grab the desired piece, and put it where it belongs.

There is also the little problem of actually placing the puzzle piece in the right spot, which requires rotating the piece and wiggling it in place. Encourage a struggling child that he can do it, give verbal directions but refrain from helping outright. If you do it, the brain will lose an opportunity to learn an important lesson, and the next time the kid plays with the puzzle he will struggle again.

Obviously, this refers to all activities that require hand to eye coordination, like buttoning a shirt, for instance. If you constantly do it for your child you don’t allow him to train his brain.

Good hand to eye coordination is required later in school for holding a pen and learning how to write. The child can see how an A is supposed to look, it’s right there on the board, but directing the hand to trace it on the paper that’s a completely different story.

 

Concentration

That’s a really tough one! How do you make a small child focus on any task for more than two minutes, unless, of course, he’s set his mind to go through the kitchen cabinet in search of cookies in which case he can devote as much time as necessary?

Puzzle games are an excellent tool to improve a child’s attention span. It’s not just the cute images, after all, if the child’s never seen a rabbit he might not be as impressed as you are with the little bunny.

Puzzles are an enigma and deserve a child’s full attention. Well, not always. It might very well be that your child would much rather play with the toy train at the moment, in which case it is recommended to put the puzzle away and leave it for another time.

When you do get the child to pay attention to the puzzle you will notice that he will become engrossed in it. It’s a challenge and any self-respecting baby is up for a challenge. Especially if he watches you assembling the pieces easily because the baby wants to copy you. He’s been doing this from day one. Watching the way your face moves when you talk and smile is how a child learns to talk. He wants to walk like you and if you have fun doing a puzzle he will want to have fun too.

To keep a child interested in a puzzle, make sure it is not too challenging, but also not too easy. If it is too difficult the child will get frustrated and he will abandon the idea, while if it’s too easy and he’s already mastered the baby puzzles they’re no longer an enigma worth investigating.

As your child grows and masters the basic concepts needed to solve a puzzle buy new and more complicated models, with smaller pieces. Keep in mind that the age group mentioned on the box is more of a recommendation and you’re the one to judge if a 50-piece puzzle is too complicated for your child or not.

Experts say that a 3-year old can focus on one task for 6 to 15 minutes. If the puzzle you’ve just presented to him requires more time he might lose interest. To keep him interested play with him, don’t just put the puzzle in front of him and expect him to solve it on his own. You’ll get there, too, don’t worry, but first, you have to show the child solving puzzles is fun and you enjoy it.

However, there’s a very fine line between being there with him and doing the puzzle for him. If you sense he’s growing frustrated because he cannot find a certain piece, help him, by all means, but keep in mind that solving the puzzle must be his achievement.

 

General Knowledge

Did you know that jigsaw puzzles were invented in the 18th century England to teach children geography? The first puzzles were drawings of the European continent glued to a hardwood board which was then sawed along border lines, so the children could play with them and find where each country is supposed to be.

There are many geographical puzzles available today, even spherical ones which give children a more accurate impression of the world they live in.

Once your child manages to complete a map puzzle you can glue it on a board and put it somewhere in his room, for future reference. You will find that your child will be able to locate a country more easily if he’s actually worked on that puzzles.

All puzzles can be used to teach the children something, from the most basic picture of a dog – here’s the head, there goes the body and that’s the dog’s tail. And while the child is busy putting the dog together, you can talk with the kid about the whole species, explain dogs’ behavior, and how to safely interact with a canine.

There are puzzles that teach a child about his own body, even very detailed ones that show internal organs.

Another type of puzzles you might want to experiment with are those meant to teach reading, numbers, or addition. For instance, the child needs to pair a piece with a 2 on it with the piece that has a drawing of two ladybugs.

 

Problem-solving abilities

Most adults have their own method of solving a puzzle, but kids have yet to learn how to work efficiently. It’s the simple things you don’t even think about like putting all the pieces face up or separating them by colors.

Explain to your child why it would be easier to have all the pieces facing up and why all the blue pieces go in the same pile as they make up the sky.

If you’re using a puzzle with words, have him separate all the images (cat, dog, girl, boy) and put the one with letters on them in another pile.

This problem-solving ability will be of great help when the kid goes to school and has to deal with a complex task that requires a good strategy rather than the time-consuming trial and error method.

 

Language

Puzzles of any type are great for play-learning. You can teach your child new words related to the puzzle he’s focused on without him even noticing you’re trying to teach him something.

With a toddler, use this playtime to practice notions like colors and numbers, body parts, or adjectives like big/small.

If you have an older child, keep him entertained by encouraging him to talk about what he sees in the picture or make up a story about the characters. For instance, if the puzzle represents a scene from Snow White, you might want to go over the story again and talk about the dwarfs or the Queen. This is a great way for the child to practice the language already acquired or learn new words.

Riddles are another type of puzzles particularly useful to teach a child new words. Start with easy riddles where the answer is obvious, like cat, house, or mushroom, and work your way to more abstract problems, like day and night or the four seasons.

 

Social skills

Whether it’s you who’s playing with the child or you have two kids trying to solve a puzzle together, this type of activity is an excellent opportunity to develop social skills and understand the benefits of collaborating.

Children are notoriously self-centered, but solving a puzzle is a great way to teach them about sharing, teamwork, and helping each other out.

For instance, you can divide the puzzle and decide I’ll do Mickey Mouse and you’ll put together Minnie. Ask your child to help you find Mickey’s shoes and make sure to express your gratitude so that the kid will do the same when you help him.

 

Self-esteem

Any accomplishment gives your child another reason to be proud, starting with the first time he makes it to the bathroom in time.

Solving a puzzle is a major feat for a toddler and he will be thrilled. Join in the excitement, congratulate the kid, and make sure everyone one in the family, including the cat, hears about it.

Children want nothing more than to be older and to be able to do things for themselves because that’s what the grown-ups in their lives do. Solving a puzzle that seemed undoable in the beginning is a step in that direction and every achievement will increase the kid’s self-esteem.

Make sure to always raise the stakes just a bit and throw bigger challenges at your child to keep that self-confidence up.