AILSA CHANG, HOST:
This weekend, the fastest jigsaw puzzlers in the land will be in Atlanta to compete in the National Speed Puzzling Championship. Reporter Leslie Eiler Thompson helps us put the pieces together.
LESLIE EILER THOMPSON: A tough team competition is about to begin in a Minnesota ballroom.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, God. Here we go.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Ah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Come on, you got it, got it, you got it.
EILER THOMPSON: One hundred teams of four players rip open bags with identical 500-piece puzzles. They've never seen the puzzle before. It's a collage of buildings and icons.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: OK, bottom towards me or bottom towards you? Bottom towards you because you're doing border.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yep. That's fine.
EILER THOMPSON: This was at the St. Paul Winter Carnival last year, where competitors do a jigsaw puzzle as fast as they can. They have to know their team members' strengths to build their solving strategy. Here's Margaret Long with a team called What The Flip.
MARGARET LONG: So for me, I get stressed out opening the box, so I leave that to somebody else. But I'm happy to take, like, a giant building or the sky with a gradient, so we try to kind of claim the sections of the image that we're most likely to be successful.
EILER THOMPSON: These puzzlers call themselves puzzle people. There have been competitions for decades with formalized tournaments held as early as 1980. Jigsaw puzzling has grown substantially since the pandemic, with new organizations and websites founded in the last several years.
TAMMY MCLEOD: The switch to a lot of communication going online through Zoom, for example, enabled Zoom competitions.
EILER THOMPSON: This is Tammy McLeod. She's a Guinness Book of World Records holder for speed puzzling and helped found the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association in 2020. It organizes the annual competition happening this weekend. For puzzlers like her, it's not just the adrenaline rush that keeps them going.
MCLEOD: I like putting things in order, sorting out problems. Jigsaw puzzles are kind of a natural fit for that because everything's jumbo to start with, and I like to sort it out and make sense of it.
EILER THOMPSON: And many are finding friendship and community. Speed puzzling events are popping up in restaurants and bars across the country.
Back in the Minnesota ballroom, the team called Puzzle! At The Disco wins first place with a time of 16 minutes and 38 seconds. Seventy seconds later, the team two tables down puts in its last piece.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Second - second place Sarah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Let's go.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: We love it. Yes.
EILER THOMPSON: The national competition in Atlanta this weekend will have teams putting together 500- and 1,000-piece puzzles. For NPR News, I'm Leslie Eiler Thompson.
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