Apr 08
15
Marathon Puzzle
Posted by Stephen15
Tags: challenge, complete, Debbie, puzzle, victory
POST OF AN OLD DRAFT. Originally dated Tuesday, April 15, 2008.
I bought Debbie a puzzle for her birthday. She loves puzzles, and I didn’t want to insult her intelligence with something too easy. So I picked one I thought would present a bit of a challenge and hoped she’d find it interesting. Little did I know that I’d given her the most impossible, fiendishly difficult puzzle ever.
The picture was essentially a random pattern of leaves in fall colours, with no pattern, no broad detail, no differentiation. Just tiny little leaves. Even the cabin kind of blended into the background. Click here to see some close-up detail.
To compound the difficulty, the presence of small children (and cats) made it necessary to lock the puzzle away whenever Debbie wasn’t working on it. Rather than sitting on the table to be worked at whenever there was a free moment, the puzzle could only be brought out on special occasions: when Debbie had a free evening. And we know how often she gets one of those (small children, etc.).
Debbie’s birthday was many, many months ago. For the longest time, the puzzle was a skeleton of borders and thin vertical strips where there were tree trunks. There were evenings of mutterings and imprecations against husbands who give ridiculous gifts. I apologized. I suggested she leave it, pack it back in the box and I’d get her another one. But no. Debbie is not one to quit. She finishes what she starts.
Tonight she finished the puzzle.
After some celebratory hugs and kisses and some commemorative photos, the puzzle was broken up and returned to its box and put away with the other puzzles. Now Debbie is free to focus on her quilt and her cross-stitch. That is to say, on her other puzzles of piecework during free evenings of single-minded concentration.
