Puzzling
This one is for puzzle doers only …
Honestly, if you haven’t spent hours obsessing over a puzzle, staying up way past your bedtime, sometimes even dreaming about the scene — one more piece, one more piece, one more piecing your way through an evening, then just move on.
Because you will most definitely not understand.
Puzzles make me feel simultaneously supremely smart and embarrassingly stupid. The same puzzle, in the same hour, can make me feel those ways. In the same ten minutes sometimes, or one minute even.
You know that magical feeling when you pick up a piece, something totally random that doesn’t even have any discernible shape or color to it? But you know. Immediately. Exactly where it belongs.
And you put it there, not even trying, but placing with confidence. And it fits. Boom.
That’s what my brother’s friend used to say every time he got a piece in. My friend and I were working on a puzzle years ago and my brother’s friend hopped over to the couch and said, “Oh I’m great at puzzles,” and my girlfriend and I probably looked at each other and rolled our eyes like, “Uh huh, whatever.” And then, what do you know? “Boom.” One piece in. “Boom.” Another. He was good at puzzles after all.
And “Boom” was the perfect sentiment. Because it makes you feel sort of invincible, like “Bring it bitches, I can handle anything.” Like, I am extra gifted in some special way. (Even though last I checked puzzle expertise wasn’t super marketable. But no one is thinking of marketability metrics when you fit the randomest piece in on your very first try.)
Other times, you have a piece in your hand that you’re sure —one hundred percent certain— must go somewhere, and somewhere specific. It has a hint of color. An edge or a line or an unusual shape and you know it belongs, somewhere important, somewhere that’s been waiting for it to be found. So you try every conceivable spot. Flip it one way, then the next, over and over, everywhere it could possibly go.
But nothing.
I’ve been working on puzzles lately in my own home. This might not seem significant but I used to make myself save them for vacations, mostly because they really suck me in (heck, I’m writing a Medium piece about them). But during Covid, with so many fewer evening outings, meetings only on Zoom and social opportunities canceled or postponed, I’ve allowed myself the pleasure (or the pain?) of puzzling at home.
I sit in my dining room, trying to contain the spread of pieces to one small corner of the table in case, on rare occasion, we actually want to eat in there (which has only actually happened on Thanksgiving and Christmas and even those haven’t included guests for two years running). Sometimes I listen to music and sometimes a podcast. But tonight, I found myself straining my ears to listen to whatever my husband was watching on TV two rooms away, part football (boring), part news (compelling but depressing), part Marvel (interesting but hard to follow without the visuals). So mostly, it was quiet.
Which left me alone. With my puzzle thoughts.
And holy shit, are they weird. I find that I talk to myself when I puzzle, even mouthing or muttering words as I go. Sometimes I’m determined: “Oh, come on. Come on now, you’ve got to work here, you’ve got to!” Sometimes distraught, as if a particular piece has conspired against me to cause great suffering: “How can this go ab-so-lute-ly NOWHERE?” Like nothing has ever felt so unfair. Sometimes incredulous, when you get those WHAT pieces … “What?! How on earth did that go there? That is the exact opposite of where I was expecting it to go and just happened to try it out of desperation and randomness.” Sometimes strangely aggressive: “Yeah, that’s right, that’s right, mother fuckers. Screw you!” (Like, who are the mother fuckers? The puzzle makers to whom I paid money to entertain me? And who am I screwing? And why am I so angry?) But other times, victorious: “Oh! … Oh yeah! Genius level over here!” (I would pat myself on the back at these moments but I have frozen shoulder so my arms don’t reach that far.)
And sometimes, when things go perfectly right: “Boom.”
But like I said: Only puzzle doers will understand.
