Just a few bits of news…

I’ve been contacted by several people who are starting or have started up new jigsaw puzzle companies and websites, and I am passing the information on to my readers. I am not promoting any of these puzzles or sites, this is informational only as I haven’t had a chance to assemble or review any of these puzzles.

Perhaps if you are feeling like playing along on a tournament website or your to-do pile is getting low you may be able to find some out of the way places to perhaps do a little puzzle shopping or even just looking around. Remember that smaller companies have much higher costs to produce and ship their puzzles, so the prices are normally quite a bit higher than puzzles from big companies that are mass produced.

Even if none of these is your cup of tea, it might be entertaining to spend some time looking around these sites to see what they’re offering. If you’re anything like me, you enjoy reading about and window shopping for puzzles as well as actually assembling them.

This puzzle company was started by a former teacher with a graphic arts background who began publishing these puzzles upon her retirement. She created these puzzles for middle school students; they are all 513 pieces, and teach concepts in math, science, English, and social studies. I love the idea, and the images are fantastic! (I especially love the look of the math puzzles) Each puzzle also includes a downloadable lesson plan, which is great if you’re a teacher or homeschooler, or if you feel like going back to middle school for a weekend. 😉

Check them out at standardsinpuzzles.com – according to the owner they are still shipping puzzles daily. I can’t speak to their quality as I haven’t assembled any of the puzzles themselves, but if anyone tries them out I’d love to hear from you.

Attention Buffy fans…

Jasco Games has been a board and trading card game publisher for over 10 years, and they are now applying their art foiling techniques to new lines of Buffy jigsaw puzzles that they are launching.

They have launched their first jigsaw puzzle project on Kickstarter featuring Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is also their most popular board game. If you’re interested you can check out their Kickstarter page here, today is the last day of their campaign. It’s already completely funded, but there’s still time to get in on it and order some Buffy puzzles if you’re of a mind to. Again, I haven’t assembled any of these puzzles, so I have no direct knowledge of their quality. I’m hoping they’ll be good, because they look like fun.

Marshall Rhinehart has started a free website, to help do his part to encourage people to stay at home. His wife is a nurse educator, so keeping people at home (and perhaps puzzling) helps keep his wife and thousands of other healthcare workers like her a little more safe.

You can create an account, participate in tournaments or just time yourself when you assemble your puzzles and post your stats on the site. You can also post or find available puzzles in your area for swap or sale, or just spend your time looking around at the puzzles others have completed. He’s just getting things up and running, but if it takes off it might be a fun place for puzzle junkies to hang out a bit. Check it out here at pandemicpuzzleplayoffs.com

I think it’s a great idea to encourage people to stay at home to slow the spread of the virus, which helps to keep our healthcare heroes a little bit more safe and keeps the system from being overwhelmed. And you know for sure that I think spending some time puzzling is a fantastic idea!