A Puzzling Hobby

By Nancy K. Crevier

It might be “puzzling” to others, but to Barbara Wyslick the challenge of a good jigsaw puzzle is relaxing.

“You can visit while you do a puzzle, or sometimes after a busy day, I’ll just wind down by doing a puzzle,” said Mrs Wyslick, a former first grade teacher at Middle Gate School until her retirement in 2002.

“I think I like doing puzzles because I am a math person,” she said. The organized process of locating a piece and matching it up appeals to her. The owner of well over 100 jigsaw puzzles, Mrs Wyslick has been doing puzzles since she was a child. Her love of the hobby was instilled in her by her six aunts, and especially by her Aunt Marge’s special friend, Helen.

Helen would join the extended family gatherings in New Hampshire, and when her Aunt Marge bought a cabin up there 41 years ago, a long table in the front room overlooking the lake became “the puzzle table.”

She recalled how Helen would always bring puzzles to the cabin and when Mrs Wyslick’s family visited, they would do a puzzle a day. “Helen would only buy wooden puzzles, though. She would never do a cardboard puzzle,” said Mrs Wyslick.

After all of the aunties passed away, Mrs Wyslick became the seventh owner of the New Hampshire cottage, and it is there that she and three friends congregate for a Girls’ Week each summer. “My college roommate, Rosemarie, and Helen’s niece, Joanne Gormley, and I always have a puzzle going up there on the table. My friend Judy McReady joins us, too, but she is more of a reader,” said Ms Wyslick.

Helen continued to join the family gatherings until her death three years ago at the age of 97. Her niece inherited the numerous high-quality wooden puzzles her aunt had collected, and gave Mrs Wyslick several of them. Ms Gormley also loans Mrs Wyslick puzzles from the collection every year, along with detailed information about the puzzles.

For instance, in the puzzle named “The Last Match,” Ms Gormley notes that two pieces are missing and there is “one piece with teeth marks.” The 300-piece puzzle titled “Over The Fence” has had three pieces replaced by Bob Armstrong, a puzzle restorer from Worcester, Ms Gormley wrote in this year’s missive. She also includes information about the style of puzzle piece — wavy cut, not interlocking, random cut — and the approximate time it takes to complete the puzzle.

The older wooden puzzles do not have pictures on the boxes, and this makes them even more intriguing, said Mrs Wyslick.

“Real puzzlers would not look at a photo,” said Mrs Wyslick, although she divulged that on occasion she and her friends have “cheated” and looked at the picture of some of their newer puzzles. With some of the more difficult puzzles, they have been known to photograph the finished puzzle and insert the photo in an envelope for the next puzzler with the warning “Don’t peek!” scribbled across it.

The puzzlers appreciate a high quality puzzle, such as those made out of thick pieces of wood that fit snugly together. A good puzzle is also cut in irregular pieces, not the four-knobbed versions that are common in the inexpensive “Wal-Mart puzzles,” said Mrs Wyslick. She and her fellow puzzlers are also impressed by the “figural” puzzles, in which the pieces are cut into tiny, intricate animal and human figures interspersed with more random pieces.

The rich colors and shapes of a puzzle made by a respected puzzle maker, such as Liberty or Stave, are a treat for those who appreciate the art of puzzles, said Mrs Wyslick, but the handmade custom Stave puzzles can cost upwards of $1,000 each.

Her daughter, Jennifer, shares her love of puzzles and an all-day visit for baking or visiting allows them time to put together a puzzle as large as 500 pieces.

“I really don’t like the 1,000-piece puzzles,” said Mrs Wyslick. “They are difficult to fit on a regular sized table.”

During the winter months when she knows that she will have four or five days free, Mrs Wyslick said that she will set up a card table in her living room and take out one for the many puzzles loaned to her by Ms Gormley. “I can sit here in the natural light and enjoy the warm sun coming through the front door. It’s a great way to wind down,” she said.

The puzzles have been a great way, too, to bond with family and to maintain friendships. “I think that puzzles have brought us together in many ways and have kept us together. We just have a good time together.”