Making Puzzles Isn't as Easy as You Might Think

I've gotten a bit unfocused in my last few posts. I thought I'd return to the main topic of this blog for at least a while. Many people have asked me how jigsaw puzzles are made and it strikes me that I've been keeping them in suspense. Well, no more.

A jigsaw puzzle, as produced today, is basically a piece of cardboard cut up into pieces. The cardboard is as much as an eighth of an inch thick (usually less) and its cut by a bunch of knives set into a piece of plywood. These knives are not so different from your kitchen knives that are probably dust-covered and sunk into a block of wood on your counter. However, your Wusthof- Henckels are probably not bent into the shape of puzzle pieces. If they are, you probably make very interesting sandwiches.

Anyway, these knives cut the cardboard into shapes that someone like me designs. It's not exactly like you'd think. Firstly, when you slice a tomato for instance, you probably move your knife in a back and forth motion. When a knife cuts a puzzle, there is no such movement. It just forces its way into the cardboard until its cuts all the way through. Try this with a tomato...really...though if you cut your hand off, I don't even know you, okay?

Unless your knife is sharper than I think it is, the tomato will first wonder what is happening to it. It will do the tomato equivalent of scratching its head. Then it will protest your method. It will try to make itself look bigger in the hopes that you'll get scared away. It will do this by bulging on either side of your knife blade. It will continue this charade until you either run away in search of easier prey or until, in a uniquely tomatoish display, it bursts and bits of gel covered seeds and red tomato flesh spray all over your kitchen. When you're done with this little experiment you may or may not have anything useful as a vegetable left. Your knife may be embedded a half inch deep in your cutting board. However, you will have demonstrated that, often, slicing is much preferred over pressing. If you're not convinced, try cutting a slice from a nice loaf of Italian bread, or a rump roast. Now, try a piece of puzzle board.

The puzzle board will laugh at you and your cutlery. Luckily puzzles aren't cut by kitchen knives. Basically, puzzles are cut using the same method used to cut shaped cookies...this would be a cookie cutter, for those of you who don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen. The big difference is that cookies are made from soft cookie dough and puzzles are made from hard cardboard. If the puzzle board is finished laughing at your knives, try a cookie cutter on it. The ensuing laughter may be deafening.

Well, when the puzzle board is no longer chortling over your efforts, try showing it a puzzle press. A hush will likely fall over the room. Ha! not so funny now, is it, Mr. Cardboard? Why has everything gotten so serious? I'll tell you why. Instead of dealing with some culinary buffoon who can barely chop salad fixins, we're now looking at a 1000 ton hydraulic marvel that could squash you flat without even realizing you were there.

Do you remember in the movie "The Terminator," at the very end, when the Governor of California exposed his sparklingly relentless endoskeleton in a final fit of...relentlessness, and chased Sarah Connor through a hydraulic press? Well, that's the same animal that cuts jigsaw puzzles into bits. And, let me tell you, if it can squish a gleaming cyborg from the future, it can do a wicked number on a piece of cardboard.

If you're losing your nerve, remember what a fool the tomato made of you. A puzzle in a box seems so innocent, so homespun, so safe. Well, your typical 1000 piece puzzle has gone through a press that can press 1000 tons. No one knows what that means, I know, so I googled "how much does a car weigh" to give some frame of reference. The first answer was roughly 3000 pounds for a Pontiac Vibe and while I don't know anyone with a Vibe, let's say a car weighs 3000 pounds or a ton and a half. So, a 1000 ton press can exert enough pressure to lift 667 (I rounded) cars. That's about ALL the cars in a typical parking lot, plus a bunch more.

So, the press presses (they don't call it a 'press' for nothing) the knives through the puzzle board. I'm not exaggerating about the forces involved either. A 500 ton press can't make a 1000 piece puzzle (at least not in one shot). The rest of the processes involved aren't too complicated. There's a laminator that sticks the picture on the board before the puzzle gets cut and a breaker that breaks up the pieces to go in the box. The laminator is a bit like an egg-wash and the breaker is essentially a glorified eggbeater, if you're comfy with the kitchen metaphors.

Anyway, its kind of an amazing process and one that's more brutal than most people think, but as Sarah Connor would say..."You're terminated, jigsaw puzzle." That's what happens when the puzzles become self-aware. In future columns, I'll tell you what happens when the puzzles get out of line and try to exceed the tonnage of a press. It can get ugly, but we'll get through it together, okay?