How to Choose the Best Jigsaw Puzzle? My Unique Insider’s Guide

Will it fit your table?

Check the finished dimensions on the box, then measure your table or board. Leave room for sorting pieces and somewhere to put the box picture. Piece count alone won’t tell you how much space you need, especially with large-piece or panoramic puzzles.

If you need the table back between sessions, think about where the unfinished puzzle will go before choosing its size.

The first choice is which material?
Do you prefer wooden or cardboard?
If you are unsure, then choose a cardboard puzzle first.
Compare the prices and pictures available in both materials.

If you choose wooden, perhaps you are already a jigsaw puzzle connoisseur and want the finest things in life!
Wooden jigsaw puzzles can have great, unusually shaped pieces called whimseys.

What do you want to spend?

Set a comfortable budget and compare the total price, including delivery. Look at the picture, finished size, piece shapes and material together; a higher price doesn’t automatically make it the right puzzle for you.

For children, check the age guidance and warnings on the particular puzzle, rather than choosing by piece count alone. Keep puzzles with small parts away from children under three.

I was involved in product testing children’s puzzles at Gibsons to ensure that individual puzzle pieces didn’t have weak points that could easily be twisted or bitten off.

For the puzzle you are buying, read its label and instructions. The CPSC’s toy guidance explains the age-label and small-parts advice.

For adults, there are also different puzzle piece sizes. Some of us need to consider how easy the puzzle pieces are to handle.

Don’t assume that all 500- or 1,000-piece puzzles have the same sized pieces. Look for the actual piece dimensions or a life-size example on the box. “Large” and “extra large” describe a range, so compare the particular puzzles rather than relying on the label alone.

If handling small pieces is awkward, a large-piece puzzle may be worth trying. Check whether its pieces are comfortable for the person using it, as well as whether the finished puzzle fits the available space.

A 500-piece puzzle can be a good starting point, but there is no prize for choosing more pieces than you’ll enjoy! A smaller count may suit a shorter project; 1,000 pieces gives you more to sort and assemble.

Piece count is only part of the difficulty. Look at the composition too: a smaller puzzle with lots of plain sky can be more demanding than a larger one with plenty of distinct details.

Don’t assume that 1,000-piece puzzles get all the best artwork. Look for a picture you love at a piece count that suits you; publishers’ ranges and choices vary.

The same applies to many puzzlers—they will stick with their favourite brand, whether that is Ravensburger, White Mountain or Gibsons for cardboard puzzles or Liberty, Wentworth, or Nautilus for wooden puzzles.

There are many reasons for sticking with the same brand. They may like the type of puzzle image, puzzle quality or customer service.

The puzzle quality does vary across brands, and the board is one part of that.

Special puzzle board can vary in thickness, stiffness and finish. Thickness alone doesn’t tell you how cleanly the pieces are cut or how well the printed paper is bonded. Look at the edges and surface as well as the stated thickness; board colour is not a quality guarantee.

Once the printed paper is ready, it can be glued to the puzzle board before cutting.
Puzzle cutting is both a science and an art.

The puzzle ‘cutter’ design is important. Some companies will have a regular pattern where each individual puzzle piece can look exactly the same. Similar-looking pieces can make it harder to spot a false fit.

Other companies will vary the design so each piece can have one, two or three ‘lugs’ or ‘holes’. A varied cut can help you distinguish pieces (although sometimes the difference is very small, so you could squeeze it into the wrong place if you wanted).

For me, variety in the puzzle shapes is part of the enjoyment.

The paper’s whiteness affects how the printed colours appear; it is the background they are printed on.
A suitable paper surface helps control how the ink is absorbed. Too much absorption can dull the colour and lose detail.
If you have tried printing on grey recycled plain paper at home, you will see how flat the colours can be compared to specialist white-coated paper.

Paper and ink are important, and so are printing companies. They control how much ink goes onto the paper, and I have been lucky enough to oversee this process many times – making sure the colours are accurately reproduced with the best saturation and contrast. Even with the same image and printing machine, results can vary—the printer has to juggle the ink and press settings!

The print quality is important, but the stage before is equally important.
If the image is poor-quality to start with, it will become a poor-quality puzzle, no matter how good the printer is.

It all starts with the artist (or photographer). If the artist paints on a tiny 7 x 5cm canvas and the printer has to enlarge that to a 70 x 50cm puzzle, fine detail can be lost, and the texture of the canvas may also show through – creating a distracting effect in the final puzzle.
I always encouraged the painter to paint on as large a canvas as they could. Trevor Mitchell is a great example of a painter who knows exactly how important that is.

The painting then needs to be photographed or scanned. Again, the better the photographic equipment is at taking the highest original resolution pictures, the better the finished quality—sharper details and more accurate colours true to the actual painting. Just a note to any potential puzzle photographers—any image can be enlarged to be high-resolution, but it is the resolution of the original image that counts.

So, now we have the best painter with the largest canvas photographed by the best photographer with the best camera,  printed by the best printer on the best coated paper with the best ink.
It’s still, however, not the best puzzle for YOU. Why?

The puzzle shows the wrong picture!

Only you can determine which pictures you like; nobody else can tell you otherwise.
You may only like cats, so the best puzzle for you would not be a puzzle about dogs.
You may like peaceful country scenes of nature, so a busy street scene in New York is not for you.

Luckily, that is why thousands of puzzles exist on hundreds of different subjects.

Now we have the perfectly printed puzzle about your favourite subject.
Let’s pretend the puzzle features cats.
But you still don’t like the puzzle!

Different artists have different styles.
You may like photography or comic scenes as opposed to paintings?

You may like brightly coloured puzzles but the artist of the puzzle may have  painted in watercolour with its muted colours and broad brush strokes. You would have preferred an artist who paints with oil or gouache.

Now we have the perfect puzzle painted by your favourite artist on cats, but you still don’t like it!

Puzzle composition.

The composition of a painting (or photograph) for a puzzle is how the different elements of the painting are arranged and, importantly, how many there are. A measure of the composition is whether a puzzler knows where that puzzle piece should go in the puzzle.

For example,  a puzzle about cats would have one miniature painting of a black cat on a white background.
Some puzzlers may enjoy the challenge of having 90% of the puzzle pieces just show white, but it would be too much for the rest of us—this would be a tough composition.

An easier, more interesting puzzle composition would be to have lots of different breeds of differently coloured cats and kittens playing with balls of coloured wool in a kitchen with lots of pots and pans in the background. Every puzzle piece would contain details of the painting, and the different colours would also help the puzzler know where that piece fits in the puzzle.

Another example of a hard composition would be having lots of plain blue sky covering the top half of the puzzle.
An easier composition of the sky would be to have it covering only a quarter of the puzzle and also to include lots of different clouds, flying birds, and maybe a branch of a tree covering the corner with its blossom.

The more interesting the composition of a puzzle, the better the puzzle (for most puzzlers!)

Nearly there … we have the perfect puzzle – excellent quality, artist and composition.
What makes a puzzler pick that particular puzzle from the shelves of dozens?

A Great Puzzle tells a story – Michael Gibson.

What did Michael mean? Michael talks about an emotional connection with the puzzler.
The best puzzles go beyond colours & composition. They say to a puzzler

Do you remember when …
… you used to visit this sweet shop?
… you went to this seaside town?
… you spent time in the garden with your grandparents?
… you played with your cats in the kitchen?

Now you have the best puzzle for YOU!