Minnesota is a powerhouse in this fast-growing cold-weather sport. The best players come from here. The biggest competition in the country takes place here. And the national organization of the sport is based here.
We’re not talking about football, cross country skiing or hockey here. Minnesota is the state of the speed puzzle.
“We are definitely one of the hotbeds of puzzle-solving in the country,” said Duluth-area resident Valerie Coit, co-chair of the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association, which she helped launch in 2020.
And yes, it’s a sport – including full-time professional, national and world championships with livestream coverage and cash prizes of up to 1,000 euros (just over $1,000).
But why Minnesota?
Enigmatic seems to thrive where people spend a lot of time indoors. The season begins when temperatures drop and the nights become longer. And as Coit so aptly states, “We are a state known for having a long winter.”
It’s no coincidence that the country’s largest puzzle competition, the long-running St. Paul Winter Carnival Jigsaw Puzzle Contest, attracts more than 1,200 participants to downtown St. Paul in the dead of winter.
However, it is far from the only speed puzzle competition. There have been a number of competitive events across the country recently, driven in part by increased interest in puzzles during the pandemic.
A Texas company called speedpuzzling.com hosts four online competitions per month and also sponsors in-person state and regional championships such as the Minnesota State Speed Puzzling Championship, held last July in St. Paul. The USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association held a national championship in San Diego last year. And in 2019, a World Puzzle Championship was launched in Spain.
The rise of serious puzzles has given rise to puzzle influencers like Karen Kavett, a self-proclaimed “professional internet puzzler” from Los Angeles who has 250,000 subscribers and more than 50 million views on her YouTube channel, Karen Puzzles.
“The sport has just exploded,” Coit said. “It’s really getting started.”
Minnesota’s dream team
Online competitions have led some top competitors across the country to form puzzle dream teams instead of just competing with family and friends. One star puzzler is Sarah Schuler, a 27-year-old St. Paul resident who until recently was the top-ranked puzzler in the country.
A competitive puzzler since middle school, Schuler is currently a puzzle professional who makes a living doing social media for the puzzle industry (@sarahdoespuzzles on Instagram). So far this year, she has solved about 300 puzzles, which equates to about 167,000 puzzle pieces she has put together.
Your personal record for completing a 1,000-piece puzzle – a puzzle your family might spend the entire Christmas holiday working on – is just under 90 minutes.
“My brain likes to solve puzzles very quickly,” Schuler said. “When you’re in the zone, you’re just caught up in this mystery.”
Schuler sometimes teams up with Lauren Kautz, a 24-year-old New Hope resident who won the state championship and is currently ranked second nationally.
“I probably solve two to three puzzles a week,” Kautz said. “I almost always have one on the coffee table.”
The third-ranked speed puzzler in the country is Michaela Keener, a 29-year-old Duluth native who is currently pursuing her doctorate in rehabilitation and health sciences at the University of Kentucky. She once put together a 500-piece puzzle in 31 minutes.
“I definitely like making things happen,” Keener said.
A kind of puzzle Olympics
As a result, Minnesota produces some of the best puzzle solvers in the country. But how do they compare to the rest of the world?
That question was answered last month at the World Puzzle Championships in Valladolid, Spain.
The event, a kind of puzzle Olympics, attracted more than 600 participants from 56 countries, including the USA and Canada, all over Europe and even India, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and New Zealand.
In the individual final, a race to complete a 500-piece puzzle, Keener placed 17th. Schuler finished a disappointing 45th out of 180 people who qualified for the event. But the puzzle image – a photo of a sun-drenched restaurant terrace in Sicily – didn’t suit American tastes in quick puzzles, according to Keener.
“It’s a very European scene,” Keener said. “There wasn’t much going on.”
“I don’t like taking photos of the sky. “I don’t like taking photos,” Schuler said. “That wasn’t my kind of puzzle.”
Schuler and Keener had a chance at redemption when they teamed up for the couples event, which was filmed by three roving cameras and streamed on YouTube, where it garnered more than 70,000 views.
Coit helped provide color commentary for the action via livestream.
“I was on the air for 29 hours over four days,” Coit said. “It’s really fun to watch. It’s more exciting than you would expect.”
The 99 teams in the pairs final had to assemble a 1,000-piece puzzle featuring a pop art illustration of colorful buildings titled “Boston 2189.”
“You’re all going to be shocked,” Coit said as the chaotic image was revealed. “It’s terrible.”
But Coit predicted the startling image would bolster the strength of Minnesotans. And it did.
The puzzle baffled most teams, who couldn’t complete it within the two-hour deadline. But Schuler and Keener fought through, their hands telepathically wrapping around each other, passing pieces and pushing them into place in a process Schuler calls “slamming.”
“These plays start to happen really quickly,” commentator Coit said. “A feeling of fear creeps in.”
The world champions were a strong Spanish team. But in second place were Minnesotans Schuler and Keener.
“I have tears in my eyes right now,” Coit told the YouTube audience after watching the Minnesotans stand at the podium. “Omigosh, I’m crying.”
The next day of the championship was another good day for Minnesotans. Schuler and Keener were part of a four-person American team called the “Misfits,” which placed second in the four-person team competition, just behind a team from the Czech Republic.
The Misfits also set a world championship record in the semifinals by putting together two 1,000-piece puzzles in a row in just over an hour and 15 minutes.
Five of the top ten teams in the four-person event were from America. And on four of those teams, half of the puzzlers were from Minnesota.
“I think we have shown that we are a country full of good puzzlers. Our puzzle teamwork is very strong,” said Schuler. “I’m really excited about next year.”
How to Become a Speed Puzzle Player
While some people may have a knack for puzzles, veteran competitor Cynthia Schreiner Smith, chairwoman of the St. Paul Winter Carnival Jigsaw Puzzle Contest, said anyone can go faster.
In fact, Smith teaches skills for puzzle competitions in a community education class in St. Paul. Here are some tips from her and top Minnesota puzzler Sarah Schuler.
Practice what seems insignificantB. by placing the pieces on a table and quickly turning them right side up while sorting the edge pieces at the same time. Use both hands. Competitive puzzlers also practice quickly removing the plastic wrap from a puzzle box. “You can save five seconds,” Schuler said.
Try putting together a puzzle upside down. Pairs and team competitors typically position themselves on different sides of the table. Also practice putting together a puzzle face down so you learn to sort the pieces by shape.
Don’t let your hand hover over the puzzle as you try to figure out where a piece belongs. This prevents your teammates from seeing the puzzle. For the same reason, do not wear dangling clothing or jewelry. Wear comfortable shoes. They will stand if you are a serious player.
Don’t stack pieces or hoard pieces in your hand or place loose pieces in the middle of the puzzle.
Do not eat or drink during competition. It takes too much time. “When you pick up food and put it in your mouth, you don’t touch puzzle pieces,” Smith said.
Competitive puzzle
Every sport has its own jargon. This is how you talk about the game.
Bag check: Check carefully that you have removed all the pieces from the plastic bag in which the puzzles are packed. See also ground control.
Dissectologist: A puzzle solver. The term comes from the term “disassembled map,” the earliest form of puzzles, which were maps cut up by country that were reassembled to learn geography.
False fit: If a part seems to fit in the wrong place.
Turn over and sort: What you do after you throw all the pieces on the table. Also called flip and edge.
Ground check: What to do when the last piece seems to be missing?
Traffic jam: Arbitrarily trying to put a figure in the wrong place. Also called Rotate and Jam.
Button: The rounded tab that fits into the recess of an adjacent part. Also called Nub or Outie.
Mallery move: A technique for picking up a subset of assembled pieces and placing them in the correct location in the larger puzzle. It was named after a Minnesota contestant, Leslie Mallery, who was featured in “Wicker Kittens,” a documentary about the St. Paul Winter Carnival puzzle competition. (She now has a “slowly enigmatic” YouTube channel called TheMalleryMove.)
Rub puzzle: Run your palm over the surface of a finished puzzle to check that all the pieces are there and because it feels good.
Puzzle ribbon: Puzzle competitions attract more women than men. Their supporting partners are called puzzle bands.
Shape sorting: Divide the pieces by shape instead of just color. Often used when trying to compose a section using only one color.
Sorting compartments: Small trays for collecting groups of similar pieces. Allowed in some competitions, but limited in size and number.
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