ˈpəzəl
Aaliyah Haro
PUZZLES
500 piece Jigsaw puzzle of Italy’s Cinque Terre By Dowdle
Price at Costco for $10.00 and on the official website for $24.99
Aside from the obvious exercise of the brain, solving Jigsaw puzzles can come with a multitude of benefits. For example:
Exercising the Left and Right hemispheres of your brain stimulates logical thinking as well as creative and intuitive thinking.
The combination of working both your left and right brain helps you think critically and intuitively, which is important for decision making and being able to look at more than one aspect of challenges we experience on a daily basis.
Jigsaw puzzles help with short term memory, giving people a fighting chance to minimize the damage of Alzheimer's.
Studies show that exercising the brain through problem solving and mentally challenging yourself through different kinds of puzzles can help combat against a number of brain related and memory diseases such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Increases productivity
Solving a puzzle helps give the brain a fresh outlook and can relieve stress, helping enhance productivity.
Reformed mood and problem-solving skills
Due to the increased production of dopamine, our moods are enhanced through us matching pieces or completing the puzzle as a whole and our problem-solving skills are also at work because we’re forced to think critically in the more challenging aspects of the puzzle.
My Experience
The puzzle itself came with a guide as to what the picture shows. It would have checkpoints and explain what that area of the picture is in real life. It was my first time taking on the challenge of completing a jigsaw puzzle in years. Since I started the puzzle, it has proved to be more challenging than I originally acknowledged. So, naturally, I asked my younger sibling to join me in completing the puzzle. One thing I would have done differently would be to complete the puzzle on a table. I did it on the floor, and it definitely caused a strain in my neck. On the first day of starting the puzzle, I spent an entire 90 minutes working on my strategy by collecting all the pieces with faces or birds and separating them. When I came back to start the puzzle again, I already had some pieces connected but not in place for the picture. I started looking for more pieces to connect, focusing on the coloring and other details such as shape. When I was connecting the pieces, it was pretty challenging, as it is such a chaotic photo with tons of people and detail that are easy to miss. After I connected enough pieces together, I wanted to start figuring out where everything would go, so I tried looking back at the photo for reference. It was still confusing but I got a better idea of the layout, which helped me stay motivated to continue. I got to the part of the puzzle where I realized my strategy wasn’t the strongest. I wanted to start finding the corners. By this point, I was getting discouraged, but I ended up finishing it up with help from my older sibling this time.
Overall, when I saw the puzzle at the store, I was looking at the pictures and I liked that this one reminded me of the movie Luca. I figured I could complete it with my younger sibling while watching the movie, which is what I did on the first day. I think the puzzle was pretty challenging, but I didn’t get certain benefits from it that I was hoping for. Some benefits I did get were better problem solving skills, productivity, and mental exercise. I think that both the absence of stress relief and an enhanced mood have to do with the amount of time I had to figure it out, as well as just being overwhelmed as a beginner. I think that if I continued to challenge myself with puzzles, I would feel a lot more confident and develop a more efficient strategy that would then lead to the benefits of enhanced mood and stress relief.
Three Pack of Dowdle Puzzle including Cinque Terre
Jigsaw Puzzles good brain excercise
Italys Cinque Terre Dowdle Jigsaw (500)
