Time to collect puzzles. How to solve puzzles: tips for beginners How to solve a large puzzle

13.06.2019

Who among us in our life has not collected a mosaic or the now common name - puzzles. This activity will be equally interesting for both young children and their parents, especially if you do these together. Many people absolutely do not recognize mosaic as a way of spending their leisure time.

Here I would like to throw a stone into their garden and point out that not every person has enough willpower to bring this lesson to the end, besides, here you have to work with your head, because puzzles are different, from 20 to several thousand pieces , from cartoon characters to beautiful landscapes.

And knowledge - how to collect puzzles, comes with time, with experience.

Of course, it is very interesting to explore something for the first time, but several simple tips clearly will not interfere with your collection of your first mosaic.

How to quickly assemble a puzzle? To begin with, you need to do an extremely simple thing.

You should find all the corners of the mosaic, and all of its parts that are "flat" or "blunt" on one side, in general, the border of the mosaic, and after you carefully (It will be better if you go through carefully once, instead of then chaotically go over all the details over and over again, looking for the missing part), you should proceed directly to the collection of the mosaic border.

After you have done this, you can move on to the next item.

Try to find all more or less noticeable parts in the assembled drawing, for example a tree, or some other significant detail that is easy to notice. You should re-enumerate all the details and find all that are at least a little bit suitable for the object you are looking for.

Then, of course, you should try to collect this part, and until then, until you put together everything that you have the strength to do. It should be said that the game of collecting puzzles is very exciting. And you can completely imperceptibly spend the whole day and even more on it.

Further it is worth moving on to all such other objects, as their importance decreases, and so on until the bitter end. If the above method does not suit you, then you can try to assemble the drawing with two more methods, moving from the center to the edges, or vice versa. I hope everything is clear here.

If you are not satisfied with these methods, then unfortunately I can not offer anything more. But who knows, suddenly you will invent your own innovative method of how to assemble a mosaic.

And finally, let's say a few words about the puzzles themselves. You should not immediately start collecting giants of thousands, at first a mosaic of 500 pieces will be enough, and so on incrementally.

Also remember that jigsaw puzzles are primarily leisure activities, which should not be devoted to all your free time. If you feel that you no longer have the strength and desire to do this, then switch to something else.

And with the help of the mosaic, you can train not only your will, but also patience, since you must admit that there is nothing simple in collecting a giant from 1000 pieces. Good luck in your endeavors!

Several hundred scattered cardboard pieces. On the front side each of them has an incomprehensible image. But if you put them in a certain way, then a zealous collector will see a natural landscape or an old castle, graceful animals or outlandish plants, noble lines of an expensive car or the silhouette of a big city crashing into the sky. Everyone can find a puzzle picture to their liking. Her name is “puzzle”.

Well, first of all, there is a free way to start jigsaw puzzles: collect them online. A very large collection of paintings located on the Gallerix.ru website is also a very large collection of puzzles. If you want to collect jigsaw puzzles virtually, then here is the place where there are a lot of them:
Collect jigsaw puzzles online at Gallerix.ru

And when choosing and assembling a cardboard puzzle, it is worth answering a few questions:

1. How to choose a puzzle manufacturer?

If you want to get a high-quality picture, you should pay attention to the company that made the puzzle. The manufacturers that have earned the trust of buyers include such companies as the Polish Trefl and Castorland, the German Ravensburger, Heye and Piatnik, the Spanish Educa, the Italian Clementoni, and the Russian Step.

2. How many parts should the puzzle consist of?

It is hardly necessary to immediately choose a jigsaw puzzle consisting of several thousand pieces. Such a puzzle is not cheap, and the chance to assemble it (for a person without relevant experience, of course) is small. It is most likely to start with a puzzle of 300 - 500 pieces and after that, after filling your hand, take on sets of 1000 - 4000 pieces. Experienced collectors work with puzzles from 13,200, 18,000 and even 24,000 pieces!

3. Which picture should I choose?

Of course, your favorite! But remember that a jigsaw puzzle with large solid areas (such as the sky, for example) can be too difficult to assemble. It is also difficult to put together a jigsaw puzzle depicting an oil painting (especially one made in the impressionism technique). In this case, only parts of the artist's large brush strokes will be visible on the details of the puzzle.

4. How to choose a place to assemble a puzzle?

This is not an idle question. Assembling a small puzzle takes a couple of hours, but a larger puzzle will take days, weeks, and possibly months. During this time, details may be lost. To avoid this, it is worth preparing several boxes in which the sorted parts will be stored. The surface on which the puzzle will be located should be flat and easily portable (we'll see why later).

5. How do I start solving a puzzle?

First of all, you need to sort the details, selecting those that correspond to the edges of the future picture. Having assembled the puzzle frame, we get the basis for further assembly. Having carefully examined the picture on the box, we will mark the places that are most easily identified. Let's collect them and place them approximately where they should be according to the picture. So, the easiest stage of the puzzle assembly has been passed.

6. How to assemble solid-colored puzzle areas?

The monotony of the sky, sea or vegetation can confuse a beginner puzzle-collector. However, don't despair! The pieces of the puzzle should be tightly adjacent to each other, and there should be no jags or protrusions in the cutting lines of adjacent pieces.

As a rule, puzzle pieces alternate in a certain sequence depending on their shape. If you identify a pattern of their location, you can collect a solid area very quickly. But do not forget that a modern puzzle consists of parts of many shapes (up to 16) and it may not be so easy to grasp the logic of their arrangement.

7. The puzzle is complete. What to do next?

It depends on the purpose of the puzzle. If only for the sake of entertainment, then you can disassemble the puzzle in order to return to it again after a while. But the assembled puzzle can also be used as decoration! Of course, the resulting picture is hardly worthy of taking a place in the living room, bedroom or hallway. But why not hang an appetizing still life in the kitchen, and attach a beautiful landscape on the wall of a country house?

So, we turn the assembled puzzle into a finished picture. Press the front part of the picture with a piece of plywood and, picking up the surface on which the puzzle is located, turn it over with its back side up. Remove the back surface (which is why it should be easy to carry!) And carefully apply an even layer of glue to the puzzle. Some manufacturers complete the puzzle with a tube of special glue - you should use it. Adhesive tape or scotch tape is also used to fasten the parts. You can stick the puzzle on cardboard or a sheet of plywood, but in this case, there is some risk: as a result of unsuccessful gluing, the puzzle may bend into an arc.

Collecting puzzles - an incredibly exciting process that allows you to have fun and usefully spend your time. But to make this activity enjoyable and not too tedious, you need to follow simple and effective advice.

When buying a puzzle, you should give preference to well-known manufacturers. Only having a high-quality puzzle, you can happily plunge into the work, without being distracted by minor troubles due to defective parts and mismatching equipment.

Preparing for assembly

Assembling a puzzle takes a very long time and can take weeks and months depending on
the complexity of the image. The first step is to carefully consider where the workplace, and how it is convenient to equip it so that the puzzle in the unfinished state is not damaged, and its parts are not lost.

Do not sit on the floor or on the dining table - this can lead to the loss of details. It is best to allocate a special table for such purposes. The place to work on the puzzle must meet the following requirements:

The surface of the table must be larger than the size of the puzzle.
The chair should be comfortable, allowing you to keep your back straight.
Equip good overhead lighting, use a table lamp.

Build start

Before proceeding directly to collecting the puzzle, you should sort all the parts. This laborious and meticulous process will take a lot of time, but then it will significantly affect the assembly speed. For these purposes, you need to prepare small cardboard or plastic boxes.

The pieces of the puzzle can be sorted according to the following criteria:

By form. In almost all puzzles, there are standard shapes of parts - short, large, long, irregular.
By color scheme. Separate puzzles of light tones from dark ones, monochromatic details that clearly stand out in color, the background of the future picture.
Frame details. The puzzles that make up the frame should form a separate group, regardless of color or shape.

The sorted parts should be laid out in boxes in one layer in even rows so that each element is clearly visible. Having done this work, you can start assembling the frame. Having selected parts in a separate group and looking at the sample image, it will not be difficult to do this. Finished frame will give an idea of the size of the puzzle and will help to avoid mistakes at the beginning of work.

Assembly technique

The assembly process is quite slow, requiring attention and patience. Experienced assemblers develop their own effective techniques, allowing you to cope with thousands of puzzles in the shortest possible time. But choosing the best assembly method can only be done in practice.

There are such methods:

But using only one of these methods, completely excluding the other, is almost impossible. In the process of work, you can resort to combining assembly methods and even creating your own unique technique.

Having mastered the technique of assembling puzzles, you can not only diversify your leisure time, but also develop visual memory, train accuracy and attentiveness. Ready-made puzzles will be an excellent decoration of the room in the form of paintings.

Life puzzle

Family fun ideas are appreciated at any time of the year. Jigsaw puzzles are a great alternative to TV and video games, because collecting them is not only interesting, but also useful for the development of fine motor skills and logical thinking... If you are new to the world of colorful puzzles (or your puzzle-solving strategies are not working as you would like and you are looking for fresh life hacks), this article will help you figure out how to correctly and quickly assemble jigsaw puzzles. Very soon you will learn how to deal with pictures of any complexity, like a real pro!

Before you start collecting a puzzle, you must select it. If this hobby is still new to you, do not immediately be tempted by huge puzzles of two or three thousand pieces. It is best to start with 500 pieces: by realistically assessing your skills, you increase the chances that the puzzle will not be left to collect dust in the box in a semi-assembled state. With a little practice, over time, you can easily move to a more advanced level of difficulty.

The number of pieces in the puzzle also depends on how much time you are willing to devote to this activity. When choosing a picture, give preference to a topic that is interesting to everyone who will participate in its assembly. If the image is not to your liking, it is likely that very soon you will lose any motivation to get the final result in the form of a finished puzzle.

By the way, what are you going to do with the assembled puzzle? After all, it can not only be folded back into the box, but also hung on the wall in a beautiful frame. The latter assumes preliminary gluing, so you should be careful when choosing a surface on which you will glue. To avoid staining the table with sticky glue, you can cover it with a piece of cardboard or waxed paper. Make sure that the size of the spacer matches the size of the assembled puzzle (information about the size of the puzzle can be found on the box).

An equally important role is played by the choice of workspace, because the passion for puzzles requires a lot of space. This moment is characterized by several important nuances:

work surfaces that have a different function (for example, dinner table in the kitchen) are only suitable if you are using a puzzle mat or other portable surface. If necessary, such foresight will allow you to conveniently move the puzzle in order to urgently free up space;
to avoid clutter, store items in plastic bags or containers. This organization ensures that no part is lost during the assembly process;
the area of the working surface should not only accommodate the assembled puzzle, but also provide additional space for assembling individual elements of the picture.

General scheme for assembling puzzles

Of course, each puzzle requires an individual approach. Nevertheless, there are 5 universal (and most importantly, effective) strategies:

finding and assembling parts with smooth edges. After collecting the frame, you will receive limited space and a rough understanding of where to go next;
flipping all elements face up. This, at first glance, a tedious task at times simplifies the assembly of puzzles. Seeing all the fragments in front of you, you are much faster oriented in the shades and shapes of details, which, in turn, greatly speeds up the process;
sorting by color. For most puzzles, this is a great move, since it is often quite easy to distinguish shades belonging to a particular area of the image. It is much more difficult to cope with "impossible" puzzles (English impossible), where the picture is a repeating pattern of the same color. But even there you can try to separate shades that appear less often. Pile everything that is impossible to determine the first time in a pile, to which you return when you have exhausted all the basic color fragments;
sorting by shape. Each manufacturer is characterized by its own type of cutting: from the classic rectangular with projections and depressions to round or triangular with wavy edges. The more varied the details, the easier it is to assemble the puzzle;
special details. Some of the elements represent some of the most visible parts of the image (for example, inscriptions or a single repetitive color motif). Try to immediately separate them from the rest of the details: the more such "islands" you have, the easier it will be later to put the puzzle together.

Particulars

Do not try to cover the whole puzzle at once: it is much more efficient to break it into small sections. Visual progress will motivate you to keep building the picture.

Place the finished sections in the approximate places near the frame, even if they are not yet connected to it. Visualizing the space will make it easier to find other missing items.

If you are tired or tired of the puzzle, take a break. After a while, with a fresh eye, you can easily notice everything you missed!

Assembling small puzzles 160 - 500 pieces

The small amount of detail allows you to experiment with the complexity of the image. The assembly diagram of such a puzzle depends on its colors and cutting method.

Assembly of medium puzzles 1000/1500/2000 pieces of parts

Having stuffed your hand in the small pictures, you can proceed to the assembly of the "thousanders". Assemble the frame to understand the real dimensions of the puzzle. Then try to add up all the bright parts of the image, and then move on to the background.

How to correctly collect large puzzles 3000, 4000 and more

How to correctly and quickly assemble jigsaw puzzles consisting of many parts? Puzzles for several thousand most often consist of a couple of packages with equal amount elements. Moreover, many manufacturers have one vertical part identical to the other, inverted by 180 degrees. Knowing this, you can peep at the already assembled half and mechanically look for the desired element.

How to collect glowing puzzles

Assembling fluorescent puzzles is not very tricky. Act on general scheme and as a bonus, you get a painting that will glow in the dark.

Features of the Castorland Puzzle assembly

If you take the assembled Castorland jigsaw puzzles with different patterns, but with the same number of parts, and superimpose one on top of the other, the shape of the elements of the lower and upper puzzles will be identical (since the company uses the same cutters). Thus, Castorland fans can draw themselves a real cheat sheet for assembling a puzzle for any number of pieces.

How to assemble a puzzle without a picture

This kind of entertainment is not for the faint of heart. You will have to use all possible techniques and techniques: frame, sorting by color and shape, as well as the choice of special elements. And yes, please be patient!

Assembling a wooden puzzle

Wood puzzles are creatively cut, so the easiest way to assemble them is based on the shape of the parts. 3D model of wood puzzles resembles a constructor and requires instructions. Depending on the manufacturer, you may need glue paints for it (most often they come with the kit).

Picture puzzle and assembly

A special challenge is puzzles in the form of photographs of paintings by famous artists. The hardest thing to collect is landscapes and Impressionist works. Distinguish shades of strokes oil paint on the details is very difficult, so special attention should be paid to lighting the workspace. The most inconspicuous touch can in fact turn out to be a striking element of the picture.

Assembling a solid color puzzle

A one-color puzzle should start with assembling the border. By sorting the elements correctly different forms, proceed to the schematic selection of elements, starting from any edge.

How to teach a child to collect jigsaw puzzles

Teach toddler to collect logic puzzles possible from an early age. You should start with puzzles made of wood or soft materials gradually moving on to the classic variations. If the child collects incorrectly, help him, and when he begins to succeed, limit himself to verbal prompts. To arouse interest, choose colorful drawings with characters from your favorite animated series. Don't forget to praise your baby!

Who came up with the puzzles? Honestly, I do not know the answer to this question, but I know that it is a pleasant pastime (for me personally).
Puzzles are small pieces that make up pictures. My first puzzle was for 1000 pieces ... I collected it for a long time and tediously, in the end I threw it away and half of the pieces were lost. I returned to collecting puzzles later, and my husband and I bought a puzzle for 1500 thousand. And they came up with their own collection scheme (maybe it's not new, I don't know).
1. They took a sheet of plexiglass (it was in my dad's garage) and began to assemble a picture on it.
2. From the whole mass of parts, we chose parts with a smooth edge
3. Assembled a frame from these parts.
4. Lay out the remaining parts by color. (usually the pictures are bright and easy to do)
5. Putting a box with a picture of the painting in front of us, collect the individual parts and join them together.
6. After the picture is assembled, place it in a frame under the glass.
Here is an example of a painting we have collected (for 3 thousand parts), they collected it for about a week and a half (and then only in the evenings after work)
underwater world

If it is not possible to purchase a frame for a picture, then you can do this:
1. We need a wide transparent tape and patience.
2. Glue the front of the picture with tape along the long side, strip by strip, smoothing the tape with your hand.
3. We do it carefully so that there are no folds.
4. We hang the resulting picture on the wall.
Here are examples of our unframed paintings.

Collecting jigsaw puzzles calms the nerves, develops memory and brings a lot of pleasure (and I also get distracted from thinking about food)