2025-09-06
My best speed challenge yet! This one was a doozy though. I’m not sure how I managed to finish it so quickly as I felt completely disorganized throughout. Still, it was a lot of fun and I am downright chuffed with my result. Within a few minutes of starting the puzzle I knew there were some key skills I wanted to research and improve on:
How to sort the pieces (Do the proffesionals sort the border pieces first or no? And how do they pick which areas to focus on first?)
How to manage my space (I kept moving pieces around and never felt like I had enough room to work. The size constraint is real, but I’m sure there tricks to feeling more organized.)
For this and subsequent challenges, I have measured out space on my desk to exactly match the space I would have at the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship. The tables at the event are 180cm long and 70cm wide. Most competitors will be sharing a table with one other person, so the space ends up being 90cm by 70cm. My desk is exactly 70cm wide, and bit over a meter long, so I simply added a row of post-its to clearly outline my allowed space.
Another thing I’ll want to work on between now and when I start joining real competitions, is talking to myself less. I have a tendency to whisper to myself about the pieces I’m looking at or talking directly to the pieces, saying things like “Where do you want to go?” or “Why don’t you fit anywhere??”. It’s totally fine for speed challenges in the comfort of my own home, but my future competition colleagues might not appreciate it. Then again, maybe this is common practice! Another item to add to my research I suppose.
Although I wasn’t sure what the puzzle would be before starting, I had seen this one before so I did have a slight advantage going in. I remember thinking it looked quite difficult, especially since there are a lot of colours that all bleed into each other and there are very few clear delimitations between sections. I started with the bright red in the upper-right corner, and then kept pivoting between sections every few minutes. It didn’t feel very strategic, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.
Puzzle Stats
Brand: Ravensburger
Name: London Postcard
Time to completion: 62 minutes
