# Solving jigsaw puzzles blindfolded



## Habsen (Apr 27, 2021)

Speedcubing is often referred to as solving twisty puzzles as fast as possible. I skipped the "twisty" and the "fast" part when I decided to attempt a 204 piece jigsaw puzzle blindfolded.





*
Memorization*
I placed all the pieces randomly in a 26x8 grid (yes, for letter pairs) on the table. Then I memorized the positions of all the pieces in raster scan order as they would appear in the solved puzzle. This took me around eight hours distributed over multiple days. Memorizing 204 letters pairs was actually quite easy. The time-consuming part was finding the next piece without touching any of them.

*Solving*
I expected to solve the puzzle in approximately 1.5 hours. I was wrong. It took me almost 3.5 hours. Although I recalled the position of each piece instantly, finding them in the grid was very slow. And even worse: I accidentally moved other pieces in the process. In the end I couldn't find anything where it was supposed to be. So I solved the last 15-20 pieces by trial and error.

*Conclusions*
Overall, it was a nice project. Memorizing and recalling the required information is a piece of cake with the tools I have from blindsolving cubes. However, The significant amount of time for finding pieces in memorization and solving takes the fun out of it ... at least for me. So, this will probably be the only time I do this. On the other hand, it was a good experience to be focussed on solving for 3.5 hours. This gives me some idea how these huge multiblind attempts must feel like.

Has anybody else done something like this?


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## abunickabhi (Apr 28, 2021)

Wow thats an interesting thing to attempt. It feels similar to solving mirror blocks blindfolded, but on a much bigger scale. I hope jigsaw blindfolded picks up within cubers. 

3.5 hours at one task is a commendable feat too. I have never done it. but I think it will be useful to solve 8x8+ cubes blindfolded as they need precision in arrangement similar to jigsaw.


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## Habsen (Apr 28, 2021)

abunickabhi said:


> I hope jigsaw blindfolded picks up within cubers.



I don't think so. About 80% of the time is spent on searching for the right piece. It's not that much fun. Maybe if we come up with different rules for this "event".


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