working puzzles and solving problems Archives

20 10, 2023

New Puzzle Challenge

By judythemorgan|2023-10-19T09:26:16-05:00October 20th, 2023|Friday on the Miller Farm, Miller Farm Friday|0 Comments

A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara

I have always enjoyed jigsaw puzzles. I cannot set one up during the school year because I will work on it to the exclusion of everything else.

I am actually pretty good at them, and I enjoy puzzles of all kinds. When I was visiting our grandsons this weekend, I encountered a new type of puzzle that was most challenging.

Alex loves trains. He has a set of tracks which he loves to put together. These tracks came in a box with a picture. While I was there, Alex decided he wanted the train tracks put together like the picture.

No problem, I thought as I got down on the floor and began to work.

I’m not sure whether it was my old eyes or my lack of spatial awareness but I could not make the train tracks look like the picture on the box.

The curves were going the wrong way and there were gaps in the track that did not match any available pieces. My daughter came to the rescue. She had watched her husband put the track together for Alex recently so she had an advantage. We finally got it all together and Alex enjoyed running the trains around the tracks.

When Alex tired of playing trains, Theo took over.

It was worth the team effort to make the track look like the picture.

The Difficult Puzzle

By judythemorgan|2020-05-16T13:37:52-05:00May 18th, 2020|Writer's Life|3 Comments

I enjoy working jigsaw puzzles. And word puzzles, but jigsaw puzzles are my brain sorter for plot issues and escape from reality.

Working a puzzle, I can focus on fitting all the pieces together and when it’s finished, I have a lovely picture. Usually.

Didn’t happen this year. Not with Mary Engelbreit’s Puzzle A Girl’s Best Friend, which I love putting together for Mother’s Day every year.

All those black and white squares on the frame were my downfall. If my grandson weren’t here while his college is shut down for the pandemic, I’d never have finished.

At one point I took out the tape measure to confirm the side measured 20 inches. I decided maybe pieces had gone missing in the last move.

I took the sides apart and started again multiple times. By the fourth time, I was extremely frustrated.

Enter grandson with sharp eyes and nimble fingers. He got the frame together while I worked the middle, which with all the similar colored patterns did not prove much easier.

With Mother’s Day three days away, the middle was finished and only the floral border between the inner picture and the black and white edge remained to connect.

Grandson had a major project due, so I was on my own. A piece would fit the black and white edge but not connect to the middle pieces. Happened not once but several times.

I pulled the edge apart and reassembled. Still the floral border pieces wouldn’t connect.

Mother’s Day and the puzzle still not finished, I admitted defeat and, threatening to throw the puzzle away, went to bed. Next morning, I found this.

Grandson had flipped top and bottom edge pieces and finished.

I’m not throwing the puzzle away. But I’m not messing with edge again either.

I didn’t cheat and leave them connected when I took the puzzle apart, though I was very tempted. I coded the backs of all the edge pieces then stored them in their own little bag in the puzzle box. Next time, I’ll know which border pieces belong on which side.

Maybe I’ll work the puzzle again next year. Maybe not. Grandson won’t be here. I’d be on my own. But, at least, I won’t go blind trying to connect the pesky frame.

What to do as Winter gives way to Spring

By judythemorgan|2019-02-08T15:42:28-06:00February 18th, 2019|Make Me Think Monday, Writer's Life|2 Comments

I read in a weather blog recently that “February is not Houston’s prettiest month” and I have to say, how true.

February in Texas is the March of mountain states. Both are the months when Mother Nature is trying to transition to Spring. Skies are gray and the ground is yucky.

In the higher altitudes that means mud and slush as snow melts. You can’t ski, you can’t ATV, you can’t hike without getting dirty. Best thing to do is stay inside and read or do jigsaw puzzles.

Now that we’re back in the Houston area, February is our March. There’s no snow to melt or icy slush on the sidewalks. Nope. We have dreary, overcast days and endless misty, rainy days.

The temperature is like the wildest roller coaster you can imagine. One day will be cold and damp, the next a warm eighty degrees. Or, that can happen all in one day.

It’s not pretty.

What I do when I can’t be outside is the same thing I did in Colorado. I work puzzles.

And, write, of course.

Working on puzzles actually helps me solve stubborn plot problems and characterization issues. A different part of my brain begins to work in the background.

Then, as the pieces of the puzzle come together, that other part of my brain sorts out the plot and characterization issues until everything comes together. By the time the puzzle’s complete, I usually have a solution for my writing dilemma.

On a recent cloudy day that kept spitting rain, which often makes me colder than those sub-zero days in Colorado, I pulled out one of the dozen or so puzzles I’d packed nineteen months ago.

It’s not a new puzzle. I’d worked it before. It’s a winter scene with snow and snowflakes to help me remember how winter was before.

I didn’t get to spread it out on the large puzzle table by a roaring fire like I did in our mountain home. That puzzle table stayed behind because it wouldn’t fit in the smaller space here.

I used a card table and discovered it works just fine for puzzles with a smaller number of pieces, which I really prefer. Those 1,000 piece puzzles, beside being so large, take forever to complete. I get impatient.

How about you? What do you do when the unpretty months between winter and spring arrive in your locale?