The most fun I’ve had in the past couple of months? Placing third at a local puzzle tournament.
I mean…
Some chapters in life are just funny. Not funny-ha-ha.
You live through a pandemic. You move to a small town. You enter middle age with a small child.
The days, and years, tick by as you make cookies, attend meetings, do puzzles, write articles, play games, tend gardens, pick up projects and generally shape shift while sliding into a new phase of life.
It’s a good life. You enjoy it and lean into the comfort and domesticity. Until you wake up with a bolt…
FUN!
What! About! Fun?! What about the full-fledged, side-splitting, off the rails good times? To feeling wild, passionate, deliriously gleeful? The dancing at 2am, snorting from laughing so hard, the rush of wind as you barrel down a hill on a bike or skis, the giddiness of feeling fancy or in love or invincible. Do you remember the last time you had a smile you couldn’t coax off your face?
I guess for me, it took a puzzle tournament put on by our town library.
It was the second tourney they’ve hosted. We signed up for the first one but then had a couple conflicts and had to bow out. But we had friends who did it and relayed their experience: it was, in a word, intense. The winning team completed their 500-piece puzzle in about a half an hour. We were aghast. Originally we thought it would just be a sweet activity to do together, seeing as we’ve done so many puzzles over the years. Turns out, not only were the teams on fire, they were elbows out after it.
So we started training for it. We started with our puzzles, working up from our 200-piecers to 300 to 450 and 500, then we started borrowing them from the library. The more experience, the more versatile we’d be. We timed ourselves, pushing each other to best our performance with each go. We strategized, assigning roles—me sorting, Andrew on the edges, and Parker declaring a particular scene or color to start, which would seed the entire image. We trained all summer.
The teams were supposed to be 4-6 people, which got us strategizing again. Who could be our fourth—and maybe fifth and sixth? We wanted to keep our team small, figuring too many people would crowd the table and throw off our finely tuned dynamics. Who would a good solo puzzler be? After subtle and overt questioning of friends, we finally recruited a fellow mom, Liz.
We knew winning was a long shot but, why not? Why not participate in a puzzle tournament? A puzzle tournament!
The day of, we rolled up in our coordinated outfits—Parker’s idea; white on top, blue on the bottom—amped and slightly jittery. Which made us loose and goofy.
The host explained the rules, and then distributed the same 500-piece puzzle to all 10 teams. And then—we were on our way.
The puzzle, which was new to everyone, was a grid of bright colors, occupied by baby dinosaurs. Weird, right? And also, kind of difficult. We soldiered on and on. Liz helped me with the sorting to begin, while Andrew tackled the edges and Parker worked on yellow squares and their respective dinos. Progress was slow. We worked well together, and Andrew cranked on the edges, but the puzzle itself wasn’t super intuitive for us. We all had moments of frustration.
And then, 29 minutes in, a team completed their puzzle. We looked down at ours. Geez, not even close to done. Maybe we’d assembled 100 pieces? We looked at each other in disbelief and then relocked on the puzzle.
Four minutes later, a second team was done. Oh my. Well, we were there so we kept going.
And then we found a groove. Suddenly the pieces were coming together more quickly. Our individual dialogues with the puzzle grew stronger, and that confidence translated to our teamwork. We started intuitively working around and with each other, passing pieces that we somehow knew the other was needing. One by one the colored boxes formed into the larger grid.
A quick look around the room and we realized nobody else had finished. We actually had a shot to place third. So we cooked.
We flung pieces to each other, reached around the table, clicked piece after piece into place.
Down to about 15 pieces left, our hands were practically vibrating. We were so close. So close. Could we actually pull this off?
And then we were. We did. “DONE!” we shouted.
The host took a look and confirmed our third place finish, with a matching giddy smile. We each won puzzle-piece keychains, plus a special $5 gift card for ice cream went to Parker.
Which was beside the point. I felt like a high school quarterback who just won the Thanksgiving game. I wanted to chest bump Andrew, Parker and Liz. I could have used a beer to shotgun.
It took about a half an hour for the adrenaline to peter out. It had been a huge energy release. Maybe I’m still floating. Because we did it—we set our sights on something and we fucking won.