About Sorting

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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.

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Pieces spread out on a sheet of cardboard.

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.

 

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Yellow pieces picked out and ready to be put together.

 

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.

 

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Here the black pieces are already sorted according to shape, the white ones were sorted later.

 

Nest, Flowers and Butterflies, 2018-10-10

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Completed on October 10th, 2018.

I don’t have many old puzzles, but I think this is from the 70s. I bought it at a flea market last summer, completed it on October 10th. The brand is Ricordi Arte, 500 (large) pieces, it’s almost as big as a 1000 piece puzzle. Because the box is square I expected the puzzle to be as well. Caused me a bit of confusion 🙂

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Actually, I just noticed it says “more than 500 pieces” on the box. I didn’t count them.

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The back of the box:

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Set-up in Dortmund

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One of the first things I bought for my flat in Dortmund was a large table to assemble puzzles on, 180 x 100 cm.  You’ll be seeing a lot of this table on the blog 🙂 Any pieces that won’t fit on the table I spread out on sheets of cardboard, and while puzzling I keep them on a drying rack, seen here to the right. I have since acquired a second drying rack so that I don’t have to use it for laundry and puzzle pieces at the same time (the laundry was almost dry and the cardboard is very thick).

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Here’s a better picture of  the drying rack:

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So, what if you want to actually use the table for, say, dining? Originally I thought about having glass panels cut, but a friend suggested an alternative, acrylic glass, which is cheaper, lighter, doesn’t break as easily, and you can get these straight off the shelves in a hardware store – no need to have anything cut. Glass would, of course, look better, but you can’t have everything.

You just put as many panels as you need to cover the puzzle on the table, and after you’re done, you just lift them off again, and every piece is exactly where you left it.

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Looks a bit hair-raising, but perfectly safe. Only the pancakes didn’t survive, the puzzle was fine.

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