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LIFE: The Great Challenge - by Royce B. McClure
- FIRST TO COMPLETE IN NORWAY.
December 3rd, 2008
Torbjørg Kjelleberg - Grimstad, Norway.
Assembled between July 23rd, 2008 and December 3rd, 2008.
I received the jigsaw as a birthday present on the 23 July 2008 when I turned 45. A friend in England purchased it two weeks before hand, and amazingly it arrived on the exact day of my birthday. It weighed a massive 13 kilo!
Before I started I read through the hall of fame, reading about those who had had already completed the jigsaw. I found some good tips here. For the first few days I mostly tried to figure out how to approach this challenge, and if I should count the hours and see how fast I could do it. I tried to write down hours, but since I only puzzled now and then, I soon forgot the times. I didn't puzzle every day and some weekends I didn't puzzle at all. So I dropped it.
First I started to sort the pieces, picking out details of the picture and putting them together. It took quite a while to sort through 6000 pieces. I put them in different boxes, and then sorted them a seond time into smaller boxes.
The picture that came with the jigsaw is far too small in my opinion. After the first part was finished, my friend that gave me the jigsaw printed a larger picture of each part, each was 6 x A4 in size. That helped a lot, now I could find almost every piece on the picture by just looking at the picture.
One very good tip that I found on this website was that each of the 4 parts were cut with the same jig, meaning the shapes of the pieces were in the same position for all of the four sections (Parts 3 and 4 need to be rotated 180 degrees). So i puzzled each consecutive part on top of each other. Because of my lack of working space I had to put all parts on top of each other. I found doing this very distracting, so I put coloured transparent cellophane between each part, since it was transparent I could still see the shapes of the pieces without the distraction of the picture.
After sorting pieces by colour and pattern, I then sorted the ones I was working with by shape. The puzzle consists mainly of 6 different shaped pieces with some variations of those. I sorted them on cardboard to increase my puzzling surface area, and then stacked them. It also helps because it breaks the puzzle down into many separate puzzles that can be joined together at the end to complete the section.
I found the hardest parts were the clown fish, coral and the water surface. However, i think by far the worst part comes now that I've completed it. Now comes the time to glue it all together, attaching it to a board, and then finding a place to display it, I think I'll have to split it into two sections.
These last few months puzzling have been very enjoyable for me, and for others, my niece Tone and my friend Unni joined in a couple of times. It takes all the concentration you have, and I find puzzling a very good stress reliever. I would recommend the jigsaw to anyone wanting to challenge themselves and if a larger jigsaw becomes available I'll definitely be buying it.
All the best and have fun puzzling! Take a look at my website and article below:
http://www.tobbel.com
http://www.fvn.no/lokalt/aust_agder/article633440.ece
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