Winners and Winning Times for the 2nd Annual Artifact Puzzles 2022 Speed Contest

Here are the results from the 2nd Annual Artifact Puzzles Speed Contest held over Zoom.

The Individual Contest: 

82 amazing puzzlers competed on their own in the Individuals contest. Everyone opened their package at the same time to reveal Forest Dream by Kozyndan, which we kept completely secret until the contest (but you too can get it now).

This is a 216 piece puzzle of a highly-detailed forest scene, shaped like a person dreaming. The pieces were square-ish with knob connectors, with lots of distracting fun themed whimsies, here's a picture of some puzzle pieces (puzzle design by Ashely Boyd):

Ok, so how long do you think it took the winner out of 82 of the fastest puzzlers in the nation? Got your guess? 

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(scroll down to see the answer)

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Bet they were faster than you guessed! Scroll down to see!

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Individual Contest Winners and Winning Times: 

1st place: Kait MacKenzie at 26 minutes, 52 seconds

2nd place: Lauren Kautz at 28 minutes, 13 seconds

3rd place: Rebecca Tushnet at 28 minutes, 39 seconds

Wow! That is fast! Congrats winners!

The median time it took the contestants was 60 minutes. 

Want to see how you'd do? You can now get Forest Dream and time yourself.

 

We also ran a Pairs contest, where two puzzlers teamed-up. 63 pairs of fast puzzlers competed in the Pairs contest.

Each pair opened their package at the same time to reveal Floating Town by Roch Urbaniak, which we kept completely secret until the contest (but you too can get it now).

Floating Town has 228 pieces, and while it looks easier than Forest Dream because it has distinct color regions, the image is not as distinctly detailed as Forest Dream, so it's harder to tell where you are in the image.

Plus, puzzle designer Chandler Millwood made sure the Pairs puzzle was a bit harder to challenge our Pairs puzzlers, with unusual v-shaped pieces with unique but hard-to tell-apart connectors  (shown below) and a complex irregular edge, and a few other sneaky puzzle design tricks we won't divulge so you can enjoy all the surprises yourself ;). 

Here's a peek at the unusual piece shapes:

Ok, so how long do you think this one took our top team? 

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Got your guess? Scroll down for the winning times...

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scroll a bit more...

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almost there...

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Pairs Contest Winners and Winning Times: 

1st place: Tammy McLeod and Yvonne Feucht at 27 minutes, 27 seconds

2nd place: EB Caron and Dan Caron at 31 minutes, 53 seconds

3rd place: Melissa McCarthy and Kait McKenzie at 38 minutes, 33 seconds

The median time it took all the contestants was 1 hour, 14 minutes. 

Want to see how you'd do? You can now get Floating Town and time yourself.

 

More Wooden Puzzle Speed Puzzling Contests:

Check-out these upcoming in-person speed puzzling contests we're sponsoring, with secret-til-the-contest-starts brand new Artifact puzzles:

Half Moon Bay CA, Thursday May 19th: 10 couples can compete at the Vinoteca wine bar

Boston-area July 23rd: The Puzzle Parley (a weekend event celebrating wooden jigsaw puzzles will hold a speed contest Saturday night. You can sign up individually or as a team, but everyone will get assigned to a team of 3. Maya of Artifact Puzzles will be there moderating!   To sign-up, register for the silver or gold pass for the Puzzle Parley, and add-on the $7 speed contest when you check-out. 

 

More Speed Puzzling Contests: 

Moderating our Zoom contest was Jonathon Cluff, who runs a series of Zoom speed puzzling contests with 500 and 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles. You can learn about his events here.