What Do You Call a Person Who Does Jigsaw Puzzles?

Jigsaw puzzles though rose to popularity in recent years due to the high number of indoor game enthusiasts, was but originated way back in the 18th century. This popular indoor board game has gained a great fan-following over the years due to its thrilling nature and flexibility to suit any circle of players. Even a single person can enjoy a good puzzle and it is thus, one of the most sold board games of all time.

There are many who are so much into playing puzzles, and these avid puzzle players are often referred to as dialectologists. The name does give out serious medical vibes, but the term is linked so much with the history of the jigsaw puzzles.

Jigsaw puzzles are traced to have their origin in Britain, and a British cartographer named John Spilsbury is considered the father of jigsaw puzzles. He was a cartographer as we discussed earlier, and a cartographer is someone who works with maps. He was someone who was very close to his neighborhood and community and being a cartographer, he always had a soft spot for geography, especially world geography. He was really into teaching geography for his neighborhood kids and was very thoughtful with various creative methods to make them enjoy learning geography.

The actual origin of jigsaw puzzles lies along with these innovative teaching methods of John Spilsbury, in one of which, he drew the world map or the continents on a wooden block and separated them into various pieces, and asked the children to reassemble them to make it the actual picture again. This was the world’s first jigsaw puzzle, and without any doubt, the puzzle gets really popular among children.

Why the name ‘Dissectologists”?

Although John Spilsbury created and popularized the game of reassembling the separated pieces in the 1700s, it got the name jigsaw puzzle only in the late 1800s when the cutting tool called jigsaw was started to use to separate the puzzle pieces. Before that, the jigsaw puzzle was just a dissected puzzle, and this dissected puzzle contributed to the name dissectologists. Even after changing the name of the puzzles into jigsaw puzzles, the name of the player continued to be dissectologists ever since.

It is quite sure that many of the puzzle players around the world are not aware of themselves having such a technical name, and most are preferred to call themselves puzzlers, a much more compact and fun name. There are many popular puzzlers around the world like Queen Elizabeth II, Bill Gates, etc. and they stand by the claim that jigsaw puzzles are hands down one of the most engaging and thrilling indoor games ever made.

The name dissectologists, is also approved by the Benevolent Confraternity of Dissectologists or BCD, which is a global club for jigsaw puzzle lovers across the globe. Dissectologists are generally known and noted for their problem-solving capacity, critical thinking, visual learning capacity, etc. They are very good at thinking ahead of problems and finding a calculated solution to most of the problems. They are also observed to have good organizational skills, patience, focus, and high attention.

Playing jigsaw puzzles is a very popular hobby, and it is one of the most popular hobbies irrespective of the culture, gender, nationality, or any other attributes of the player. It simply demands the time, skill, and focus of the player involved. The popularity of the jigsaw puzzles for adults mainly owes to the fact that it does not demand any kind of professional or academic background for the players to excel in it. There is an added advantage for the puzzles in that it is very budget-friendly in nature, and the choices of puzzles to choose from is immense.

Puzzle players can choose the puzzles according to the number of the puzzle pieces, the complexity of the puzzle, the nature of the picture, etc. There are various puzzles that span from 50 pieces to 2000 pieces. Although small ones are very popular among kids, the puzzles with a larger number of pieces are what the avid adult puzzle players are keen about.

The players also get to choose from a wide variety of visual themes in the puzzle market. There are puzzles based on animal images, country or other geographical images, actual paintings, etc. Puzzlers can choose the nature and complexity of the images to play with.

Many puzzle supplies are presently available in the puzzle market to assist serious puzzle players. There are puzzle boards, puzzle mats, puzzle tables, etc. which are bound to help the process of puzzle making much easier and more convenient to the players. While choosing such puzzle supplies, players should be keen on the size, convenience, compatibility, cleanability, and affordability of such accessories as most of them are intended to be a one-time purchase by many.

Puzzle enthusiasts have always been keen to develop a fool-proof way to solve puzzles without consuming much time and effort. And there are several standard practices that they advise the players to follow to ensure a better solving rate of the jigsaw puzzles. They advise that all the puzzle pieces should be sorted first and should also be grouped according to the color or pattern printed on them. Once you have grouped them, it is always best to start assembling from the corners and border pieces and then slowly working the way into the puzzle. Then you should assemble the small groups that you have separated, and having such small targets make puzzle solving a comparatively easy one.

Top puzzle players also advise you to keep calm and be super focused when you are working on a puzzle. Always try to play them in a quiet and silent space, and make sure to take enough breaks if you are solving a quite larger puzzle.

Once you finish solving a pretty large puzzle, you are left with many choices as to whether glue them together and frame them, hoard them, separate them and keep them to play again, or give them away. There are multiple options and opportunities for you to solve and save a puzzle, and this flexible game is bound to give you chills and thrills throughout the gaming process. It is such a worthy hobby to start and to stick to.