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While we are encouraged to stay home for now, why not keep your brain active and try out some of these newly created puzzles?

Maybe you are looking for some entertainment during this unprecedented time? Wanting some travel inspiration? Or perhaps you just want to try something new? My TravelManagers puzzles at Jigsaw Planet can solve all these problems for you! You can make them as easy or hard as you like. How fast can you complete one? Maybe you can challenge yourself to do them all!

Have a go now and let me know which one is your favourite.

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Origins of Jigsaw Puzzles

The origins of jigsaw puzzles go back to the 1760s when European mapmakers pasted maps onto wood and cut them into small pieces. John Spilsbury, an engraver and mapmaker, is credited with inventing the first jigsaw in 1767. The dissected map has been a successful educational toy ever since. American children still learn geography by playing with puzzle maps of the United States or the world. The eighteenth-century inventors of jigsaws would be amazed to see the transformations of the last 250 years. Children’s puzzles have moved from lessons to entertainment, showing diverse subjects like animals, nursery rhymes, and modern tales of superheroes. But the biggest surprise for the early puzzle makers would be how adults have embraced puzzling over the last century.

Puzzling as a Hobby

Puzzles for adults emerged around 1900, and by 1908 a full-blown craze was in progress in the United States. The puzzles of those days were quite a challenge. Most had pieces cut exactly on the colour lines. There were no transition pieces with two colours to signal, for example, that the brown area (roof) fit next to the blues (sky). A sneeze or a careless move could undo an evening’s work because the pieces did not interlock. And, unlike children’s puzzles, the adult puzzles had no guide picture on the box; if the title was vague or misleading, the true subject could remain a mystery until the last pieces were fitted into place.

Source: www.puzzlewarehouse.com/history-of-puzzles