Puzzles Come to Life!

A few years ago, I wrote about the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, a 5 feet by 19 feet, 33,000-piece monster called “Wildlife,” which took a young puzzle enthusiast 450 hours to complete.

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That was a cool story in and of itself, but as it turns out, some other puzzlers have gone one step further, using the Wildlife jigsaw puzzle as their canvas for a stop-motion animation video.

This YouTuber, who goes by the name of Sky!, transformed the Wildlife puzzle into games of Tetris, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Mario Brothers, using completed sections of the puzzle as their gameplay elements.

It’s absolutely mind-blowing. Check it out:

Apparently, it took Sky! and a cohort over 400 hours to solve the puzzle and another 400 hours to animate the video. That is some serious dedication.

But that video got me thinking about other ways creative folks have used puzzly elements to tell stories.

And I was reminded of a video that’s been making the rounds on social media lately. It employs one of my favorite puzzle devices — a Rube Goldberg machine — to tell a story of three brothers who face danger and live to tell the tale. (They do use a bit of stop-motion animation at the start, but afterward, it’s all real-time motion.)

This is the story of a ball named Biisuke. Enjoy!

It’s adorable and even has a song! How could you not love that?

It just goes to show you there’s no end to the puzzly stories you can tell with a little creativity.


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It’s Follow-Up Friday: Jumbo Jigsaw edition!

Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’d like to return to the subject of world records!

Follow-Up Friday has become something of a repository of puzzly world records.

In previous installments, Follow-Up Friday posts have covered Largest Architectural Video Game Display (when a 29-story game of Tetris was played in Philadelphia), Most Game Show Episodes Hosted by the Same Presenter (for Alex Trebek’s run on Jeopardy!), and the solving of the World’s Largest Rubik’s Cube-style Puzzle.

Heck, just last week, I posted about the World’s Largest Vertical Maze.

And this week, I’ve got another cool one for you: the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle.

It is called “Wildlife,” and it’s produced by Educa. It retails for $400. It’s composed of 33,600 pieces. It measures 5 feet by nearly 19 feet. It is so large that it comes in ten separate bags, inside a wooden box on wheels for ease of movement. It is a monster.

The young woman pictured solved it in 450 hours (over the course of two and a half months). There is a world speed record for solving it, but it took 100 people over 19 hours to do it.

Pretty amazing, especially since she owns a cat, a creature rarely conducive to the solving of jigsaw puzzles.

So, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers, what’s the biggest jigsaw puzzle you’ve ever tackled? Let me know! I’d love to hear about it!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on TwitterPinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!