The new fall 2009 jigsaw puzzles from Gibsons have now been included in our website. Gibsons have been working hard to develop their increasingly popular Christmas puzzle (GIB 2009). Once again Marcelo Corti is the artist and has surpassed himself with an amazing picture that has all the elements we associate with the Christmas holidays. The image is beautifully painted with a pallette of rich colours and heart warming family activities. Hot drinks, sleds and brightly lit toy shops are all there. Giant snowflakes and twinkling golden lights add a fantastic seasonal feel. The church sits atop the hill in the distance to remind us of the reason for all the goodwill.

Jigsaw puzzles are available in many sizes but a thousand pieces remain the favorite. The normal layout is thirty eight pieces by twenty seven pieces and with a total of over one thousand pieces. Five hundred piece  puzzles are made twenty seven pieces wide by nineteen.

Various  jigsaw puzzles come in the shape of squares, circles, triangle and rectangles for toddlers, to one hundred pieces for older. For children they usually show suitable ages by the number and size of the pieces within. For puzzles with less pieces , youngsters will be building the puzzle. Most of these are made of durable materials that are easily wiped.

The more pieces to a  puzzle, the more time it takes to build. To add to the degree of difficulty of a jigsaw buy puzzles that are double-sided. These can be assembled from back or front. This adds  complexity to the assembly because the solver cannot be sure which side of the piece is right. This requires patience for the solver because there are many trial and errors before you get it right.

Christmas is only the beginning of the puzzle season. This past two months have been very hot for Gibsons Puzzles. Despite slower retail business overall the jigsaw puzzle trade has been going full blast. Perhaps retailers were a bit light on their puzzle ordering before Christmas. Since then we have has mostly complete re-orders of all last fall’s new items. Combine this with a general re-stock and you find a very healthy puzzle trade. We’ve also found that stores that cater to a more mature clientele are enjoying some big increases in puzzle trade. All in all for about $25 a jigsaw puzzle really can’t be beat for hobby value.

Obviously there are many ways to stimulate the brain such as reading, crosswords or playing mind teasers such as Sudoku. Card games have the added benefit of socialization as well as deductive reasoning. It has been recently brought to light that physical exercise and diet rather than mental feats alone will help prevent the onset of dementia.

Nevertheless it is the unexpected benefit of assembling a jigsaw puzzle that carries unique observational, cognition and motor skills making the pastime distinct. Puzzle manufacturers have seen the median age of the puzzle consumer advancing and (not through any act of altruism) have been developing more puzzles with extra large pieces. Typically an extra large piece puzzle will have 500 pieces and will be the same size as a regular 1000 piece puzzle. The images tend to be brightly colored with well defined sections and with pieces whose shapes tend not to be so similar.

Learning, consolidation, storage and recall are the four distinct stages of memory. Without the ability to recall it is impossible to determine the deterioration (or lack thereof) of the other three stages in an individual. If the mind of a healthy puzzler can put together a 1000 piece puzzle in less than one hour (which is a regular competitive feat) then by encouraging those same learning and consolidation techniques in a senior there is every reason to believe a cognitive benefit will be gained.