And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”
“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!”
“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
Puzzling, puzzled, puzzler: the Grinch raised the act of puzzling to an art form when it came to figuring out ways to sabotage the Whos at Christmas. But during this stay-at-home year so many of us upped our puzzling game that puzzles themselves have achieved new status among the top leisure activities of 2020.
Families stuck at home have turned to jigsaw puzzles to pass the time, with sales spiking more than 370 percent over the year before. Thousand-piece puzzles ranked at the top, followed by 500-piece, then 750-piece; among the high-end puzzles, handcrafted wooden jigsaws (some priced at $4,000-plus) grabbed a share of the market, as did puzzles made from personal photos. One local bookstore created “Blind Date with a Puzzle” to boost its sales — for a set price the store will ship a mystery puzzle to you, no exchanges allowed. People loved it.
It wasn’t just physical puzzles, though. We also downloaded a TON of mobile apps — $23.4 billion worth in March alone — to pass the time. Games and puzzles accounted for 40 percent of that amount, with Brain Out (a brain-teaser and riddle game) and, weirdly, Woodturning 3D (a simulated wood lathe) leading the way.
The point of all this? If you’re looking for a last-minute gift (and who isn’t right now) then puzzles, either physical or virtual, just might be the way to go. It’s an easy download or gift card, but if you’d prefer to choose your own most stores have puzzles in stock that you can pick up in time for Christmas.
Just a couple of days ago, my family cracked open a 1,000 piece puzzle of an old-fashioned German town square decorated for Christmas. It’s spread out on a coffee table in our family room, most of the edges complete after the usual muttering about pieces being too small or looking too similar. Slowly but surely, each time I walk by there’s a corner completed that wasn’t before, and when we’re watching television inevitably someone settles in to work on a section.
It’s the latest one in our pandemic puzzle parade, which to date includes Toy Story, old-time telephones, an illustration of Wrigley Field, candy wrappers, and colorful cars of Cuba.
There was one disappointment, however: a 500-piece puzzle from our favorite vacation pizza spot. Our daughter finished it all but for one piece that none of us ever found. She’s still salty about that missing piece, though the German Christmas town drew her back to the puzzle table. Fingers crossed that all those pieces are there.