By Lydia Wilen
These are not puzzles like why Fairway no longer sells pumpernickel bagels. This is about jigsaw puzzles, including the many surprising benefits derived from doing them, tips for newbies, and puzzles depicting the Upper West Side, like this one:
But first…
Benefits Mixed with Suggestions
All puzzles are therapy puzzles. You’ll agree once you read the list of benefits compiled from many sources, including Fortune.com/well and the NIH. One study done at the University of Michigan claims that sorting and piecing together a puzzle for 20 minutes relieves anxiety; puzzling for 25 minutes increases your IQ by four points.
Many senior centers and other sources, as well as my personal experience can attest to the following benefits:
- Decreases stress levels and may lower blood pressure and heart rate
- Improves memory and cognitive ability (thinking, reasoning, and remembering)
- Thorough mental workout because it exercises both the right and left sides of the brain
- Enhances concentration, focus, and a greater attention to detail
- Better visual-spatial reasoning and hand-eye coordination
- Improves manual dexterity by consistently using muscles in the hand
- Gives you healthy YOU time away from your phone, Social Media, and all electronic devices
- It’s a great way to bond with family members, friends, and neighbors. Invite them to puzzle with you.
- Experience a biochemical high each time you find a puzzle piece that fits. That successful interlocking releases dopamine, accounting for a pleasurable feeling. It’s a real mood booster.
- For some, nighttime puzzling is a relaxing technique that clears the mind and leads to a worry-free night’s sleep
Before Starting
Find a place to set up your puzzle so that it’s not in anyone’s way. Consider a bridge table, coffee table or (in my case) the unused dining room table. Measure the space and select a puzzle that fits the space. There are puzzle boards…portable work spaces that fold up and disappear when not in use. There are also puzzle boards with drawers to lay out the puzzle pieces (google: puzzle boards).
Puzzle Selection
Decide on the number of pieces you want your puzzle to have. Experts say it take four times as long to do a 1,000-piece puzzle as it does to do one with 500 pieces.
Love…really love the puzzle you select and you’ll love it even more when you’ve completed it. Puzzlers seem to agree that the completed puzzle is way more beautiful than the picture on the box.
Some of the Upper West Side Puzzles That May Hit Home:
My Warning: Doing jigsaw puzzles is addictive…a safe, healthy, fun, and inexpensive addiction.
My Advice: Get hooked!
Subscribe to WSR’s free email newsletter here.
I took riding lessons at Claremont as a fifth grader.
I took lessons there and rode in the park for years in the ’40’s and ’50’s. What wonderful memories.
Couldn’t agree more , so many benefits including, it’s just fun! And join the UWS Puzzle Exchange on Facebook to meet other UWS passionate puzzlers and to share puzzles!
My mom is spending half her retirement on jigsaw puzzles. You can go ultra-cheap (picking up used ones at thrift stores/HousingWorks) or astoundingly fancy (Stave and the like). I like to get her slightly higher-end ones to mix in with her Goodwill specials.
Great piece! Are these puzzles available to buy somewhere? If not, an enterprising UWSer should make them for sale.
The link in the captions seems to indicate that they’re available at pixels.com. But the link provided just takes you to the site’s home page, and a quick search suggests that there are over 11,000,000 puzzles available there. WSR Admin: can we get links to the actual items depicted? I was going to look through all 11.000,000 items myself, but I have a dinner reservation that’s coming up shortly, so I might not make it all the way though :-).
There’s a search bar and a link for jigsaw puzzles, lol. ; )
https://pixels.com/shop/puzzles/claremont+riding+academy
What this article says about puzzles being relaxing and diverting is certainly true. But you don’t have to buy one – if you can manage a screen based puzzle, you can go to a site like http://www.jigsawplanet.com and do any puzzle you like for free. search a topic you enjoy – mountains, lakes, cats, nyc, boats – and choose from among dozens of images, mostly non commercial, uploaded by members- set your puzzle preferences – 30 pieces, 300, standard pieces or less common – and take a few minutes to go through that fun process of turning senseless visual chaos into a pleasing image. A very calming screen diversion.
I love thejigsawpuzzles.com many subjects…choose your own cut and number of pieces…up to 1.000…you can save your unfinished puzzle …a new puzzle every day..
It’s sad to see fabulous UWSiders resorting to doing crossword puzzles in their older years!
(Didn’t that used to be what young kids would do before the advent of tech!? )
Awful that the vitality, the multiple music venues, the bars/restaurants (mostly not ones on the UWS ) were what would keep us UWSiders vital and having such a great time here in the city! Time has certainly slowed us down!