Anne D. Williams

After I moved to Montreal in 1996, I took up the hobby of putting together jigsaw puzzles, a soothing occupation to pass the time during the very long winter months (wintry weather lasts in Montreal, on average, for about five months of the year, regardless of the calendar or season), so I was interested when I ran across The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History, by Anne D. Williams, who is a "puzzle expert" (and economics teacher) in Maine. This is actually quite an enjoyable book, as it charts the course of puzzle making from its infancy in the 1700s, when children in wealthy European families were given wooden blocks cut into the shapes of countries (or counties in the case of England) in order to teach them geography, all the way through to modern computer-generated, online puzzles depicting things like fractals and other shapes unheard of back in the day. There were jigsaw crazes in America, in the early 1900s, in the 1970s, and most especially during the Great Depression - the latter a fairly sensible choice, given that most people couldn't afford to go out to dinner or shows, but could afford the very inexpensive jigsaw puzzle. Some Depression-era men and women managed to earn a little cash by making the puzzles, and in that way it has also served as a sort of cottage industry in times of economic distress; some of those creators also created jigsaw puzzle lending libraries, making the hobby even more within reach of the masses. Rich people did, and still do, have puzzles made to order out of the finest materials; at the same time, cereal boxes did, and do, from time to time put puzzle cuts on their boxes for the kids to cut out and reassemble themselves; it's a very egalitarian hobby in that respect. Some puzzle makers were in it purely for the advertising of brands, others liked to include shaped puzzle pieces that became the signature of their work, or to include puzzle pieces that, when properly inserted into the puzzle, spelled out words. One young man in New Jersey even created a jigsaw puzzle out of a photo of himself and his girlfriend and their dog, with a heart-shaped piece left uninserted and a group of three hearts reading respectively "Yes!" "No!" and "Maybe" and the question written across the puzzle to his sweetheart, "Will you marry me?" Now, that's a versatile pastime! Williams' writing is clear if not soaring, and there's a wealth of trivia to be found in the book, if, that is, you're interested in the subject. So recommended for puzzlers, both the casual (like me) and the obsessed (like Williams).… (mere)