I used to sort. When I started a puzzle larger than 1000 pieces, I would start by sorting the pieces according to the colour into old flowerpots. I hated it. Not only was it tedious, but, as anyone who has ever done this knows, you will make a  lot of mistakes, because your ability to correctly identify what colour goes where develops as you are working on the puzzle.

Because I am incredibly lazy,  what irked me more than anything was that to sort a piece I would turn it the right way up, but after it went into the pot I was no better off than when I opened the box – some pieces with the picture side up, some not. I ended up turning the same pieces over many times and hated it.

After many, many years, I finally came up with a simple solution. I spread all the pieces out on sheets of cardboard and turned them the right way up. From these, I then pick whatever colour I am currently working on.

Sometimes I use a separate sheet to put the pieces I’ve picked. This way sorting becomes more flexible, and you can do it as needed while puzzling, not as a separate chore that I never enjoyed.

There is one situation where there is no way getting around sorting (in the sense of going through all pieces and assigning each to a category). When I have a monochrome area where the picture on the pieces is no help at all, I sort the pieces according to shape (“two pegs opposite” in one pile, “three pegs” in another and so on). Helps with the “brute force” approach often needed to complete the monochrome parts.