I was lucky enough to attend the 2022 Parley outside of Boston and emcee live the speed puzzle contest that Artifact Puzzles was sponsoring.
The puzzle was only revealed when the buzzer rang, and it was our never-before-seen 201 piece
Ecru puzzle Metzinger Peacock (now available to everyone).
Because these were some of the world's best puzzlers, we didn't put the image on the box, so they were basically puzzling blind with a mess of impressionist pieces like these:
and tons of these "peacock feather eye" pieces:
The puzzle design by Chandler Millwood centered on the theme of "pea-cocking" and was definitely a challenge and very unique, with some similar tricks to our
Moolin Rouge puzzle.
People competed in teams of 3. Three people speed-puzzling a 201 piece ain't easy, you got to communicate and make sure your weakest puzzler isn't hoarding pieces your strongest puzzler could be getting in!
Here's an action shot of the "The Competitive Edge" team:
In fact, these gals were so fast they took first place:
First Place: "The Competitive Edge" - Janell Amely, Yvonne Feucht, and Tammy McLeod finished in a smoking
26 minutes and 51 seconds!
Second Place Team: "Order out of Chaos" - Dan Caron, EB Caron, Sara Schuler rocked this puzzle at
29 minutes and 52 seconds!
Third Place Team: "The Anti-Chaos Society" - Michael Card and Rebecca Tushnet clocked in at
33 minutes and 8 seconds despite their teammate cancelling and having to solve it just the two of them.
Congrats to these world-class puzzlers! And thanks to everyone who joined the contest to puzzle and watch, it was a blast of an event!
Want To See How Well You'd Do? Just make sure to keep the
contest puzzle hidden before and during your timing to be fair, and you get a team of 3 puzzlers.
Caveat: to really compare yourself to these fast puzzlers, we should also tell you that the 2022 Puzzle Parley Speed Contest took place at 9:30pm in bad hotel lighting. But we don't recommend reproducing those conditions at home!
Tips for Speed Puzzling by some of the world's fastest puzzlers.
