“Curiouser and curiouser”
“Curiouser and curiouser” – the immortal words of Alice in Wonderland.
I reckon curiosity is one of the things that turns an occasional puzzler into a serial puzzler.
You see another puzzle and think, “I wonder what that one would be like?”
You finish it and, sooner or later, you're looking at another one and wondering, “What will this one be like?”
There's a little sense of anticipation every time we open a new box.
We already know what the finished picture looks like. It's right there on the box.
But then we tip out hundreds of little pieces and look from the jumble on the table to that beautiful finished picture and think:
How on earth do all these little pieces fit together to make THAT?
And that's where curiosity takes over.
You start with the edges, perhaps. Or colours. Or a distinctive building, animal or object.
Then there are all those blue pieces.
On the box it's a perfectly ordinary blue sky. On the table it's fifty pieces that all seem to be exactly the same colour.
Which ones belong together? Is that tiny variation in blue important? Is this piece actually sky – or could it be water?
Then something happens that every puzzler knows. You find another piece that fits. Then another. Suddenly you're on a roll.
Pieces that seemed impossible ten minutes ago start dropping into place. A whole section begins to come together and there's that little rush of excitement.
I've got it!
And then … nothing.
You're stuck again.
You stare at the same pieces you've already stared at twenty times. You begin to wonder whether the piece you're looking for is actually there.
Perhaps you've put something in the wrong place.
Perhaps it's fallen on the floor. There MUST be pieces missing.
Then, for no obvious reason, you see it.
It was sitting in front of you all along.
And off you go again.
A jigsaw can be a bit of a roller coaster – anticipation, frustration, discovery, excitement and, eventually, that wonderful satisfaction when everything fits.
Curiosity is what keeps us riding it.
It starts much earlier than that
Have you ever watched a small child exploring something they've never seen before?
They pick it up. Turn it over. Look underneath it. Shake it. Try something. Try something else.
And, as soon as they're old enough, comes the question every parent and grandparent knows:
“Why?”
Children seem to have an almost unlimited supply of curiosity.
Give a toddler a tray puzzle and you can watch it happening. They pick up a piece and try it somewhere. It doesn't fit.
They turn it around. Try another space. Perhaps Mum, Dad or a grandparent gives a little encouragement.
Then suddenly it drops into place.
And there's the delight of finding out for themselves.
As children grow, curiosity starts to take them beyond “Where does this piece go?”
They start wondering about the picture itself.
Who lives there?
What's the dragon doing?
Where are the fairies going?
What happened before this picture?
What happens next?
That's one of the things I like about imaginative puzzles such as our Forest Magic range. There's the physical puzzle to solve, but there's also a little world to explore.
Children notice things adults miss. They invent stories. They ask questions we wouldn't think to ask.
And quite often there isn't a correct answer.
That's the joy of it.
The puzzle has simply given their curiosity and imagination somewhere to go.
Curiosity doesn't disappear as we get older
The questions change, but I don't think the instinct does.
That's particularly interesting to me because Einstein Puzzles now makes puzzles for people at very different stages of life.
With our puzzles for older people, including those living with dementia or in aged care, curiosity can take another form altogether.
Someone notices something in the picture.
“I remember one of those.”
The person sitting beside them asks:
“Did you have one?”
And off they go.
Perhaps the answer leads to a childhood home. A holiday. A first car. A job. Something funny that happened fifty years ago.
One observation has prompted a question.
The question has prompted a memory.
The memory has become a story.
And perhaps a family member or carer learns something about the person sitting beside them that they've never heard before.
Nobody knew where that conversation was going when it began.
That's curiosity too.
So why do we keep opening another box?
Maybe this is what I've been circling around.
A jigsaw puzzle is unusual because we know the answer before we start.
It's printed on the box.
What we don't know is how we're going to get there.
We don't know which sections will fall together easily and which will have us tearing our hair out.
We don't know which piece will suddenly unlock a whole section.
And we don't quite know how this particular puzzle is going to make us feel.
That's the mystery.
And perhaps that's why finishing one puzzle doesn't satisfy a serial puzzler for very long.
We've solved that one.
We've had the frustration, the little discoveries, the excitement and finally the satisfaction of putting in the last piece.
Then, sooner or later, we see another box.
We look at the picture.
And that familiar little thought pops into our head:
“I wonder what that one would be like?”
And the roller coaster starts all over again.
