August 11th, 2009

Jigsaw Puzzle Games

A puzzle is an enigma which tests ingenuity and creativity of the solver. A simple puzzle requiers the player to place together the objects in the game, the puzzle pieces, in a specific way, a logical manner, to come up to the whole image, the desired shape, picture or solution. Puzzles are usually a form on fun, of entertainment, bu they can represent also serious logistical, statistical or math problems. There are some well known math problems, puzzles, which solved would mean very much for mathematics research world. The most important skill used in puzzles is patter recognition which, with the ability to create an order, make of the puzzle solvers very logical thinkers and good managers.

It is well known that people who have higher inductive reasoning skills can be better at solving puzzles than the other people, who have average reasoning skills based on induction. The puzzles which are based on inquiry or discovery are to be solved faster by people who think deductive.

The number of puzzle types is very big, and the most well known types of puzzle are: construction puzzles, tiling puzzles, disentanglement puzzles, folding puzzles, combination, mechanical or transport puzzles. A very important type is jigsaw, which is preferred by many people and can be found in a lot of varieties and dimensions. The name of jigsaw puzzle comes from the initial way of creating them. The image was painted onto a flat rectangular piece of wood, and then it was cut into small pieces with a jigsaw. First person who commercialized them was the London mapmaker John Spilsburt, who was also an engraver.

jigsaw-puzzle-games

Most of the puzzles made nowadays are made out of cardboard, because it is easier and cheaper in the manufacturing process, compared to wood or other hard materials. The enlarged photograph is printed on a paper, and then this print is glued on the cardboard before cutting it into pieces. Jigsaw puzzles can be found in 300-piece, 500, 750, 1000, 2000 and more than 2000 pieces boxes lately. The largest puzzle with commercial purpose had 24,000 pieces and it was 428 cm x 157 cm.

Since the broad propagation of Internet, a real niche appeared for commercializing puzzles, and there are also websites which offer the possibility of playing them online, for free.

alawar.com offers a RPG Game, Infinite Jigsaw Puzzle, which allows the player to change the difficulty level, from 24 pieces to 1040, and you can also enter you personal images as puzzle patterns. It has 100 preset levels but you can download more from the website. This game supports almost all well known graphic formats, like: TGA, TIFF, BMP, JPG, GIF or PNG.

Another cool puzzle game is Jigs@w Platinum Edition, which has a lot of options. It has a small library of images, and you can also use your own pictures for playing. Another interesting option is that you can modify the pieces' dimensions, and you can get from tens of pieces to thousands. It can be addictive, and it is a pretty cool game for jigsaw fans. The good parts of this game is that you can add your own images and that you can edit the settings like variety and the difficulty levels, but there are some negative parts too, which could be improved in the future versions: it has very few default puzzles, and for someone who doesn't want to see his face in the puzzle too, this is an inconvenience, the interface is a bit opaque and I think that this game is made for hardcore jigsaw players, who are advanced, old players of jigsaw.

You can try anytime one of the puzzles in the wide variety available on the Internet, and I think that you will find the right jigsaw puzzle for you, with the proper difficulty level, and with attractive images.