The Hardest Puzzle Ever

For Christmas, our friend KJ gifted us, Star Wars fans, a jigsaw puzzle. We like puzzles. We find weird ones at yard sales or vintage ones on eBay and we put them together occasionally. They make great rainy day activities. Normally it takes us a weekend to huddle over the dining table and snap one together. Well not this time.

It took us THREE FUCKING MONTHS to assemble this puzzle. It was an utter bitch and I might be done with puzzles for a while.

Here’s the box. It’s 1,000 pieces, which is usually not an issue. We’ve done those before.

Usually we spread out the pieces, remove the edges, and create the outer border so we know what we’re working with. For normal puzzles, this takes around two minutes. Maybe five. It took us an HOUR to find all the edges and even then, putting them together seemed extra challenging. We got it wrong a few times and had to break the frame and relocate sections before it finally fell into place.

This all began on January 21st.

Next we started with the biggest, brightest sections. Hot pink was a stand out color, so I started there. Vader should be pretty easy to slap together, right? Wrong.

This is two hours in. I timed us, the first day, thinking we’d have it done relatively fast.

Update: January 27th. We’ve been working on this a week and all we have to show for it is this small section of people down in the lower left hand corner. Mike did this all and although he will downplay his contributions, this was a key element of the puzzle.

We’ve also flat-laid all the puzzle pieces and begun the sorting-by-color process. This is usually productive. But again, it didn't seem to make a huge impact here. The puzzle was just too difficult.

Update: February 8th. Two more weeks have elapsed. We had some friends over for the Super Bowl and they lent a hand. We plucked out most of the orange/red pieces and assembled those. Darth Vader is still missing his face. I found some long sections of the edge of the Falcon, so that feels successful.

Update: March 17th. Five more weeks have passed. Over a month now. Our dining room table is entirely occupied by this puzzle and we’ve been forces to eat our meals over the coffee table. The good news is, the Falcon is shaping up nicely.

Update: March 30th. Spring has arrived. I’ve developed new methodology for increasing productivity. I’ve instituted a mason jar sorting system where I sort all remaining pieces based on color and texture. There is a jar for black space with white stars, black space with white stars and some color, blue falcon, purple falcon, sharp focus, blurred focused, and “other.”

The mason jar system has also allowed us to regain a portion of the dining table. We have resumed eating dinner there now, in a small corner unoccupied by puzzle madness.

Update: March 31st. I brewed the largest batch of coffee I’ve ever brewed and systematically emptied each Falcon mason jar one by one until the ship came together. This took an entire day. I am fucking determined.

Also, I still don’t have Vader together. I suspect it’s mostly black space void. Indistinguishable from other black space void.

Update: April 13th. After that big last push, I lost motivation for a week and didn’t even look at the puzzle. All that was left was black space pieces and they all looked the same. It was so utterly discouraging.

Then, one particularly sunny day, I got mad as hell. I wanted our dining table back. I wanted the guilt to end. So I sat down with the goal of not getting up until I completed the puzzle.

I took all the star pieces and sorted them by shape. One nub, two nubs, three nubs, four nubs, H-shapes, no nubs, etc. Then I systematically took them one by one, analyzed the remaining gaps, rotated them, and tried them until they snapped into place. I spoke to no one for hours.

And then eventually it was done. I didn’t scream. I didn’t shout. I just sort of sighed.

So now the puzzle sits, completed at long last, on our dining room table. Neither of us have the courage to crumble it back into the box. It took us 83 days, or roughly 12 weeks. That’s 22.74% of the entire year. Special thanks to our team of friends who came in and occasionally helped us put a few pieces in: KJ, Ed, and Joe O.

So, we’re going to take a break from puzzles for a while. And if you come over for dinner at our house, please mind the puzzle.