One Piece at a Time

A long time ago, I remember walking by the common area on a floor where I didn't work. It was interesting to see their various artifacts and practices on display, in particular because they didn't necessarily line up with what I was used to with my team. It was like visiting another country, and I was a sightseer that got to visit for a little while.

This was a while ago, so I don't really remember the little things. However, I do remember that they had a communal puzzle. The whole thing was set up on a table in full view of the entire team, and I got the impression that people were encouraged to work on it whenever they had a free moment. What's more, there were other completed puzzles in various places, so I could see that this wasn't just a whim.

On the one hand, this puzzle thing made total sense to me. I was the one who had an ongoing chess game with my coworker, remember? Spreading the fun around seemed perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, though, I'd never seen it in practice. I was vaguely curious about the etiquette. Did people only work on the puzzle one at a time? If you group like pieces together, are you helping progress the problem solving process or are you potentially hiding a piece needed elsewhere? Like I said, I had questions.

Well, as it turns out, someone did this on a team of my recently. So, I now have answers to some of these questions. First off, it's surprisingly fun to see it come together. It also gives all of us something to work on, so there's a bit of a shared foxhole mentality. I also discovered that it was perfectly acceptable for multiple people to congregate around the puzzle, though it's usually rare to see more than three people at once. The lack of space and access to pieces sort of limits the practicality.

The most interesting bit, though, comes from the fact that we're starting to make enough progress where the end is in sight. It's not actually done, but it wouldn't surprise me if the puzzle was finished in the next week or two. If one puzzle is fun, two should be more fun, right?

Well, this led to questions about whether the next puzzle should be harder. There are plenty of ways to up the degree of difficulty; you can find puzzles without straight edges as the borders, you can find ones where a color appears all over the place, or you can find ones with few defining characteristics. All of these make it harder to find pieces that actually fit together, and ultimately slow down the puzzle-solving process.

This reminded me of a puzzle that my siblings and I got as kids. I don't remember who got it for us, but I definitely remember the puzzle:

In retrospect, I wonder what the adult who purchased this was thinking

Yeah, there's a reason why I remember that particular puzzle. I'm pretty sure we never put the whole thing together. I suspect we just didn't have the patience for it.

I have mentioned this puzzle to a couple of coworkers, and they have always chuckled and shaken their heads when seeing this picture. The best part, however, comes from the fact that my sister recently decided to take a second crack at this puzzle. Yup, she's going to take this bad boy down. I'm totally rooting for her. That puzzle mocked us for far too many hours for me not to root for anyone who takes it on.

Here's hoping that the puzzle gods look kindly on my sister.