No matter how it is celebrated, National Puzzle Day can be a healthy and fun day! Spending time working on puzzles improves memory, cognitive function, and problem-solving skills. It is also a great way to relieve stress.
The most people immediately imagine jigsaw puzzle, when you say "puzzle". London cartographer John Spilsbury is often credited with making the first commercial jigsaw puzzle. The dissected map has been a successful educational toy ever since. While most people play jigsaw puzzles to relax and be inspired by beautiful paintings, some take it more seriously and have made jigsaw puzzling into a competition.
There are plenty of types of puzzles. Have you heard of The Stomachion? The oldest puzzle In the world was invented by Archimedes. It’s what we know today as a dissection puzzle and is 14 piece of wood, normally, set inside a square. The challenge is to try and fit all 14 pieces back into the square after you’ve removed them.
My husband has a great story connected to the puzzles. Back in 1995 he bought a jigsaw puzzle with a painting of New York. He liked the city very much and wished to visit it someday. Before the next Christmas, his father had a car accident and the whole family visited him in the hospital. His mother realized, she forgot to buy batteries and the only possibility was to buy them during the way home from the hospital. Usually would buy some cheap ones, but this time she had to buy the only one available. A battery manufacturer was holding a competition and the main price was the trip to New York. You can guess, who has won the main price. So the whole family traveled to US next year. Later my husband bought a jigsaw puzzle with a painting of mountains. The same year they saw them during the trip to France. After some time he bought a jigsaw puzzle with a cat. A few months later they found a cat and adopted it. After that he stopped buying jigsaw puzzles :-).
So, what about you? Do you like puzzles? Which ones? Do you have any stories connected to puzzles? Thank you for sharing.
