Web Puzzles

Benefits of Jigsaw Puzzles for Children

• Improves Hand – eye coordination: While playing jigsaw puzzles children learn how to observe the pieces and put them in the correct position. 
• Enhances Brain & Memory Power: Jigsaw puzzles are very beneficial in developing a child’s mental and logical behavior in their early stages. It is also helpful in developing manual dexterity. As children get older, he/she will be able to proceed to more intricate puzzle games. This will further help develop and improve their other skills such as vernacular and numerals. 
• Boosts morale: The successful completion of jigsaw puzzles presume a gratifying feeling in children. This in turn boosts a child’s morale and eventually children are motivated to play and finish more puzzles. Thus, they are also encouraged to move onto more complex puzzles. 

Types of Puzzles

• Logic puzzles using a chess board, such as Knight's Tour and Eight queens.
• Mathematical problems such as the missing square puzzle. Many of these are "impossible puzzles", such as the Seven Bridges of Königsberg, Water, gas, and electricity and Three cups problem. See List of impossible puzzles.
• Picture puzzles, such as sliding puzzles like the fifteen puzzle; jigsaws and variants such as Puzz-3D.
• Puzzle video game
• Sangaku
• Sokoban
• Spot the difference
• Tangram
• Word puzzles, including anagrams, crosswords, word-searches and ciphers.
• The Anagram Jigsaw is a jigsaw puzzle where pieces are rearranged for two correct solutions.

Puzzle Mansion

The Puzzle Mansion holds the Guinness World Record title for having the largest jigsaw puzzle collection assembled by a single person

The main attraction here is the jigsaw puzzle museum of Ms. Gina Gil - Lacuna.  Her collection consists of 1,029 puzzles (but Guinness only considered 1,028) -- beating Brazil's record by a mile -- with a total of 700,004 puzzle pieces that she has done for 27 years.

First Jigsaw Puzzle Ever Created

John Spilsbury was born in 1739 and he is considered the inventor of jigsaw puzzles. John Spilsbury worked as an engraver and mapmaker. He served as an apprentice to Thomas Jefferys, the Royal Geographer to King George III.
He invented the first jigsaw in 1767 and it was a map of the world. John Spilsbury attached a map to a piece of wood and then cut out each country. Teachers used Spilsbury's puzzles to teach geography.

Students learned their geography lessons by putting the world maps back together. Sensing a business opportunity, he created puzzles on eight themes - the World, Europe, Asia, Africa, America, England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

John Spilsbury died on 3 April 1769 leaving us the legacy of jigsaw puzzles, which are used nowadays by people in the whole world.