I’m off for a few days and have some time to kill. There’s a jigsaw that’s been lying unopened on the bookshelves and so what better time to give it a go? My eldest brought it back for me from her round the world tour and so it is well travelled. It’s a picture of great trains of America.
It’s interesting how we approach a jigsaw. Most people do something similar. Everyone starts with a system. My youngest daughter was helping me and so we sorted out all of the edge pieces and corner pieces from the rest. We then built the edge so we had a clear understanding of the size of the task. There were a few pieces we missed and so I had to dive back into the pile of remaining pieces to find them.
The jigsaw picture itself was split into a number of smaller frames each surrounded by a black line so we dug out those pieces and laid out each separate rectangle. There was also some writing and so once again we sorted these bits out pieced them together.
That was the easy bits done. All of the obvious patterns had been arranged but the majority of the pieces were still left in front of us on the kitchen table. We dug around in the pile, occasionally picking out a lucky piece that would fit but it was difficult to differentiate any one piece form another.
After a while though we started to recognise other patterns. We got our eye in. There were three red trains in the picture and as we picked the red out it seemed as if the only pieces we could see were red. Every time we turned some over another red bit would appear. Our brains beam attuned to look for red and we carried on in this way until this path had been exhausted.
And then everything was a blur again until we were able to recognise another pattern and off we went again. This pattern of confusion and recognition was repeated over and over until the puzzle was completed.
The jigsaw was fun because it played on the way our brains are wired. We’ve evolved by being able look for and find patterns in everything we see. Once we get our eye in we learn to recognise things in an instant. By focussing on a particular colour or formation we can ‘train’ our minds to recognise whatever we are looking for.
The skills that have helped us thrive have made it easier for us to do jigsaws. Millions of years of evolution can be demonstrated in a thousand piece puzzle. I never knew the jigsaw would be that informative.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 