Canny Minds Blog

Puzzling Predicament

Posted on 08. Jun, 2009 by Jenny in Articles, General

I am bereft. Each time I pass my kitchen table, emptiness assails me. Flowers, salt, pepper – all the usual clutter are there – but no jigsaw. I am happiest when there is a 1,000-piecer half-done, ready for me to tinker with whenever I’m passing.

I crave the buzz that some when an incomprehensible set of squiggles finds its home but, once I start, I can’t stop. Only backache saves me from staying up all night working on the The Rockeby Venus’s curves.

Jigsaws are a harmless addiction, unless you share the Puritan view, expressed by Daniel Defoe, that: “The killing of time is the worst of murders.” In the privacy of our own homes, thousands of us thrive on  our daily fix. Theatre producer Michael Codron has done a jigsaw a day for more than 30 years.

“I like making order out of chaos,” he says.

The Queen is another jigsaw junkie: for many years she has been a keen borrower  from the British Jigsaw Puzzle Library, some of whose 3,500 wooden puzzles have been returned, it is rumoured, with the odd Corgi bite mark.

Princess Margaret was thought to be another jigsaw addict but in reality she did not share her sister’s enthusiasm, at least in her later life. After her death in 2002, it was said that no fewer than 1,700 jigsaws were found in her attic, well-intentioned but unopened gifts.

Jigsaws, though, make excellent presents. They are silent, calming and can be combined with a little light social life. And they are gloriously cheap compared with other amusements which explains why weekly cardboard puzzles became a national obsession in the in the US after the crash of 1929. Our current recession may show jigsaw history repeating itself.

Cassandra Jardine, The Telegraph, 6th June 2009

Photo courtesy of jhritz

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