The Theory of Hard Puzzles

Artifact Puzzles - Tomasz Pietrzyk Red Towers Wooden Jigsaw Puzzle

Some of you like hard puzzles (I myself enjoy a really challenging small puzzle, but am not fond of puzzles that take weeks to finish - too much mess!).

So we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to understand what makes a jigsaw puzzle really really hard:

What are the best piece shapes?

What makes connectors easy or hard?

What's the best kind of image?

Some extreme answers are easy:  Konstantin Malevich's Black Square, with identical pieces.  But who's idea of a good time is that?

But we do have some non-trivial theories, which have led us to hard puzzles like Deccan miniature on one end, puzzles like Jaguars on the other.

But this weekend we are beta-testing the new Red Towers puzzle (pictured above), and we are shocked - shocked I tell you! at how incredibly hard it is. And very fun.

So, we are still learning new things about what makes a puzzle hard - you'll have to wait another month or so to get your hands on it, and then you can form your own theories :).