The Pair That Puzzles Through Every Last Piece

By Nancy K. Crevier

If you consider yourself a jigsaw puzzle expert, you have some competition from puzzle connoisseurs Gladys McLaughlin and Jacquelyn Stiles, who piece together more than 80 jigsaw puzzles each every year. They do it because it is a fun and soothing hobby, but they also do it as a service for the Friends of the Library book sale.

Ms McLaughlin and Ms Stiles have offered their skills to the Friends for the past four years.

“There is nothing more frustrating than to work on a puzzle and then find you are missing a piece,” said Ms McLaughlin, a self-proclaimed puzzle fanatic. “I have over 150 puzzles in my own collection.”

She and Ms Stiles put together nearly every one of the nearly 200 puzzles that are donated to the library each year.

“Anything over 100 pieces, we put together,” said Ms McLaughlin. Last year, Ms Stiles tackled a 1,500 piece puzzle, and it is not unusual to take on those of 500 to 1,000 pieces. Both women throw in the towel when the puzzle count reaches 5,000, though. “You would need a table the size of a ping-pong table to put it together,” laughed Ms McLaughlin.

The only other puzzles that puzzle hunters must take their chances on at the book sale are 3-D puzzles and children’s puzzles. The foam backing on the 3-D puzzles irritates the fingertips, say the women, so they focus on table-top varieties, which generally sell better at the sale, anyway. Rather than spending time piecing together children’s puzzles, Ms Stiles and Ms McLaughlin simply count the pieces and place them inside of plastic bags in the boxes.

The better puzzles all get put together, said Ms Stiles. Those are the puzzles made with thicker pieces that fit together nicely and which are apt to have a more interesting picture.

“I scout the card shops and toy stores to see what they carry,” said Ms McLaughlin. “Springbok, Great American Puzzle Factory, and F.X. Schmid currently put out very nice puzzles. Cheap puzzles irritate the living daylights out of me,” she exclaimed.

Both women enjoy working on puzzles from the 1950s and 1960s. Those puzzles, they said, have better quality pictures created by lithography as opposed to prints or computer generated pictures. The thick pieces lock together better than newer puzzles, making time pass pleasantly as they patiently work, one piece at a time.

They are just as happy that very few antique puzzles come their way. In the 1920s and 1930s, they explained, the pieces were cut from drywall. Those pieces were very thick and unwieldy and many pieces did not interlock, they merely touched each other. Later in the 1930s, wood veneer pieces were popular, but are also a type of puzzle Ms Stiles and Ms McLaughlin steer away from when they can.

“It was in the 1940s that the cardboard puzzle pieces were made popular,” said Ms McLaughlin.

Puzzling is an inexpensive and relaxing hobby, say the two women. “I’ve been doing puzzles for years and years,” said Ms Stiles. “I enjoy doing this.”

Not all puzzles are created equally, in her eyes. She has her favorites among the hundreds she has re-created over the years. “Sometimes it’s the picture. I had one that was not a flat edge puzzle. It had curled edges and it was beautiful. There was another one made of cork that was real nice to do,” Ms Stiles recalled.

Ms McLaughlin’s favorite is an early Springbok puzzle titled, “George Went Swimming At Barnes Hole But It Rained.” The puzzle, one of her own collection, is an abstract with a lithographic picture. “The surface of the puzzle is like a painting. It’s just a gorgeous, gorgeous puzzle. I do it about every five years,” she said.

Neither Ms Stiles nor Ms McLaughlin has been stumped yet by a puzzle. They put in several hours each day solving the pictorial riddles. Now and then, they come across one that takes several weeks and much fortitude to complete. Ms McLaughlin’s nemesis was one called “Blueberries.” The huge puzzle was nothing but rows and rows of berries, she said, and by the time three weeks of laboring over it were behind her, she was glad to see it go.

Not all of the donated  puzzles are a pleasure to work with, said Ms Stiles and Ms McLaughlin, and not because of any challenge they present. Mold is a problem, especially with puzzles that may have been stored in barns or sheds before they were donated to the library. What they call “rat chew” is another problem. Occasionally, the donated puzzle reeks of animal urine.

“I smell the puzzle first,” chuckled Ms McLaughlin, “before I bring it home or give it to Jacqui [Stiles].”

What would be most helpful to the library’s puzzle pros, they said, would be if donators would put all of the pieces into a plastic bag inside of the box before leaving it off at the library. If a puzzle is moldy or contains many warped pieces, it is best to not donate it at all.

Clearly, not all of the puzzles make the cut. If a puzzle is missing one or two pieces, it goes to the “free bench” in the lobby of the library near the meeting room. More than three pieces missing finds the puzzle on the way to the landfill. It is not an arbitrary decision.

“The reason we go through the process is that the book sale doesn’t have a lot of storage space,” explained Ms McLaughlin. “Puzzles take up a lot of space. Every box we store holds only about eight puzzles.”

Puzzle lovers can pursue their passion with abandon at the library book sale. Puzzles that have been opened and put together previously sell for anywhere from 50 cents to $5, depending on the quality of the item. Puzzles that are still sealed when donated cost $3 to $5, with vintage puzzles priced between $7.50 and $25. Children’s puzzles sell for as little as 10 cents to $1 at the book sale.

Every year brings something a little different, said Ms Stiles and Ms McLaughlin. An interesting item for puzzle fans this year, Ms McLaughlin said, might be a puzzle they received of only 140 pieces. “All of the pieces are big, all of them are crescent-shaped. The box says it can be put together in 69 different combinations.”

Even though it is missing one piece, a puzzle that features every character that has ever been on The Simpson’s television show will be offered for sale, because it is so unusual.

Like the thousands of books that fly out the door over the five days of selling, puzzles are a hot item. By half price day last year, they said, only 14 puzzles remained available. Only two puzzles were in inventory by the last day of the sale.

Puzzled? It is a good thing to be, according to Ms Stiles and Ms McLaughlin.

The 31st Annual Friends of Booth Library Book Sale will run from Saturday, July 1, until Wednesday, July 5. It will be open daily from 9 am until 5 pm.

The book sale will be at a new location this year: Reed Intermediate School, at 3 Trades Lane (off Wasserman Way). Call 426-4533 for additional information.