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Hunched over a desk in a resort convention room, 42-year-old Yvonne Feucht snaps the ultimate blue jigsaw piece into place, revealing a vibrant, beachy collage of San Diego landmarks. It took her simply 54 minutes and 41 seconds to finish. As an alternative of the quiet satisfaction that often ensues after ending a jigsaw, the room erupts in cheers as Feucht raised her arms over her head, letting out a sigh of reduction. The Los Angeles-based TV and movie digicam operator had simply turn out to be the inaugural champion of the 2022 USA Jigsaw Puzzle Nationals — America’s first-ever main aggressive puzzling match.
This weekend, Feucht returns to attempt to reclaim her championship title on the 2026 version of the Nationals. Hosted by the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Affiliation, the three-day occasion, happening in Atlanta from March 27 to 29, will welcome a whole bunch of puzzlers from all over the world and simply as many zealous spectators. Consisting of three occasions: people, pairs and groups of 4, the competitors sees contestants race to finish unreleased 500-piece and 1,000-piece puzzles.
Jigsaw puzzles have been round for hundreds of years, believed to have been invented in 1770 by British cartographer John Spilsbury as an academic device to show geography to youngsters. Through the Nice Despair of the Nineteen Thirties, they noticed a large surge in recognition as an reasonably priced escape due to the introduction of cheaper, die-cut cardboard puzzles. For the reason that new millennium, their recognition dipped barely with the rise of tv and video video games.
Nonetheless, the once-solitary pastime is now present process a quiet however transformative reimagining — as a extremely aggressive sport, with nationwide and world competitions and a quickly increasing fan base.
I first found pace puzzling on Instagram — time-lapse movies of individuals assembling puzzles at lightning pace, pure kryptonite for my ADHD. The most important star on the platform is Karen Puzzles, a 35-year-old from New Jersey with greater than 550,000 followers throughout YouTube and Instagram.
“I believe lots of people by no means thought of [speed puzzling] as an choice,” Karen Kavett, the creator behind Karen Puzzles, tells me over Zoom. “Even when they get pleasure from puzzling, they didn’t know occasions like this existed.”
Kavett started posting puzzle content material in 2018, when pace puzzling and puzzling basically had little on-line presence. Nonetheless, fueled by the 2020 pandemic — and thanks partially to Kavett’s movies — curiosity within the hobby-turned-sport has grown exponentially.
“I discovered about pace puzzling due to Karen Puzzles,” says Jen Ferris, a third-grade instructor in South Florida. Ferris, 36, had at all times cherished jigsaw puzzles as a toddler, however drifted away from the interest in maturity — significantly throughout a tough and unhealthy marriage. She ultimately stumbled throughout a TikTok of Kavett’s look on the 2024 World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship.
Ferris remembers pondering, “What is that this? That is pace puzzling? It is a factor?” It wasn’t till she lastly left her marriage that she picked up some jigsaws and tried her hand at pace puzzling. “I do really feel like I used to be in a position to lean on this interest and return to [something] I used to like. That, actually, I forgot that I cherished,” she displays. “It was type of like discovering myself [and] studying to like myself once more. It helped me heal, however it additionally helped me discover my function once more in life and discover my folks.”
Velocity puzzling has solely lately been acknowledged as a sport. The World Jigsaw Puzzle Federation was based in 2019 and hosted the world’s first jigsaw puzzle championship later that yr in Valladolid, Spain. The next yr, the USAJPA was created and held the nation’s first premier nationwide championship in San Diego.
Feucht and Kavett have competed in each competitions a number of occasions, with Kavett coming in second simply behind Feucht on the 2022 Nationals. Trying again on her victory 4 years later, Feucht stays simply as surprised as she was on the time. “I couldn’t imagine it,” she recounts. “I needed to double-check that I’d truly gained.”
Nationals is a high-energy, knockout-style occasion, the place people, pairs, and groups are steadily whittled down by way of a number of elimination rounds earlier than a closing showdown crowns the quickest puzzlers. On the beginning sign, opponents rip open their baggage and frantically flip items face-up, scanning for patterns amid the chaos. Some persist with the basic technique — constructing the border first, then working inward — whereas others plunge straight into assembling no matter fragments they will discover.
Technique, nevertheless, solely goes to this point. As Feucht places it, the true benefit lies in reminiscence and an instinctive really feel for shade — abilities that permit the perfect opponents to acknowledge, kind, and place items at exceptional pace.
It’s no fortune, however first-place winners obtain a money prize of $1,500 within the particular person division, $1,000 every for pairs, and $750 every for groups, for a complete of $6,500 in money prizes. The winnings are supposed to assist fund individuals’ journey to different speed-puzzling occasions within the U.S. and overseas.
On account of her standout efficiency at Nationals, Feucht turned a notable determine within the puzzling neighborhood. Like many, she has fond reminiscences of finishing puzzles along with her mom as a toddler. She later returned to the exercise as an grownup after coming throughout the favored speed-puzzling web site speedpuzzling.com.
For Feucht, pace puzzling has opened the door to new friendships. Extra broadly, the follow has helped ease her social nervousness and deepen her connections with household. “I wish to dump out a puzzle throughout holidays, and I really feel like lots of people come and be part of me,” she says. “It’s beautiful, as a result of usually folks don’t sit down and speak for that lengthy — however when there’s a puzzle and a shared aim, folks come, they sit, they usually speak.”
In comparison with the primary Nationals, which featured 33 groups of 4, 93 pairs, and 99 particular person puzzlers, this yr’s competitors noticed registration skyrocket, greater than quadrupling to 200 groups of 4, 400 pairs, and 800 people.
“It’s very thrilling to see pace puzzling develop in order that extra folks can uncover it,” USAJPA founding member Valerie Coit tells me in an e-mail. “We’ve heard many tales from USAJPA members that they’ve ‘discovered their folks’ and that getting concerned locally has modified their lives for the higher.”
That was actually the case for 36-year-old Emma Landgraf, who found puzzling simply over a yr in the past throughout a interval of intense stress from a demanding job. “I used to be so careworn and burned out that I wanted one thing to seize on to that was joyful,” the Chicago-based information strategist mentioned.
Landgraf put herself to the take a look at final April, competing in her first Nationals in Washington, D.C. This yr, she’s keen not solely to compete but in addition to volunteer.
“It is a very passionate group that desires to ensure they participate in making it occur,” she says. “And you actually wish to be part of that.”
Landgraf remembers the overwhelming ardour on show finally yr’s Nationals, the place almost each crew arrived in matching crew shirts, head-to-toe puzzle ensembles, and even handmade crochet puzzle tops — a real celebration of the neighborhood’s creativity. “There’s simply quite a lot of pleasure over one thing that, in concept, is type of foolish and area of interest and boring,” she says. “It’s puzzles, it’s what it’s, however it’s a very heat, loving group of individuals.”
What was as soon as a solitary pastime has quietly remodeled into a worldwide phenomenon. But regardless of its surging recognition, puzzling stays rooted in one thing extra enduring: a shared problem, a supply of pleasure, and a rising neighborhood coming collectively, one piece at a time.
