The first ever jigsaw puzzle was a map cut into bits, dating back to 1766.
In 1766, a cartographer glued a map to a piece of wood and cut it in pieces. He then challenged everyone to put it back together, and that’s how puzzling was invented!
The jigsaw was the tool used to cut the wood into elegant shapes, but it wasn’t invented until 1873, so until that came along, puzzles were called “dissections” or “dissected puzzles.”
When the first puzzles were invented, there was no picture to work with, so the guesswork made then very hard to complete. The title on the box was the only clue of what the picture would represent.
Researchers have found that when you double the number of pieces, you quadruple the time it takes to complete a jigsaw puzzle. So if it takes you one hour to do a 250-piece puzzle, on average it will take you four hours to do a 500-piece one!