Inside the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library, four women worked as a team, shuffling through pieces while speaking to one another about what part of the puzzle they were working on.
Alex Babcock took the lead and let the group know what kind of puzzle she saw as her teammates — Valerie Mackie, Eleanor Candie and Christine Mills — assigned themselves tasks on the board.
The group was preparing to compete in Syracuse at the New York Speed Puzzling Championship on May 9. The event, also hosted on Long Island that day, brings together competitors able to complete puzzles in a matter of minutes.
Before the competition, the Capital Region quartet explained why speed puzzling just seems to click for some people.
Mackie, Babcock’s teammate and mother, said teamwork is crucial when speed puzzling.
"She [Alex] says that out loud, and that helps us all know, like, OK, there's blue birds at the top of the puzzle, there's orange house at the bottom of the puzzle," said Mackie. "And I may not be totally focused on what she's saying, but it's in there. And maybe it'll come to me when I see a piece that goes where she's saying a certain item is."
Speed jigsaw puzzling is a form of puzzling in which individuals or teams are timed as to how fast they can finish a puzzle. While the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association was founded within the past decade, competitive puzzling reportedly dates to at least the 1980s.
Mackie added that competing doesn’t require any particular personality type — it is perfectly suited for everybody.
"If you're introvert, if you're extroverted, if you want to get more social, it's a nice way, because you don't have to talk when you're puzzling," said Mackie. "But you're still being social by being next to someone, being in the same space, and it's very accepting community, and that's what I really enjoyed about it."
Within 10 minutes of starting the puzzle, the team of four at the library had already finished the borders. In less than 30 minutes, the team finished the 1,000-piece puzzle.
Beyond the satisfaction of finishing a puzzle quickly, Babcock said there’s also the fun of community. She added that the more you participate in nationwide and worldwide championships, the more your world opens up. The nights before events, she said, competitors meet.
“There's just the hotel lobbies are taken over with puzzlers. I mean, you have extra tables set up in Minnesota, and just everyone is swapping puzzles and borrowing them. And some are casual, some are speed," explained Babcock. "You just go watch each other. You sit down and talk, and that's part of it is, you go, wow, I learned something from you. Or, hey, we have, you know, similar, just life experience, and you really do connect. And then when you see them again, it's like seeing a family member.”
The team won the casual puzzling team event at the championship in Syracuse.
