Sorting Or Raking The Pieces

Sorting or Raking Pieces

The definition of a Dissectologist is a person who enjoys jigsaw puzzle assembly. And the ‘ assembly ’ is the most favourite part - the sorting, not so much. That brings us to our topic of discussion here.

I have heard puzzlers say they ‘hate

’ sorting - that’ s unfortunate because it brings negativity to the puzzling experience. Some just dislike it, while others tolerate it. Some tend to do extreme sorting and some manage to assemble 3 to 4000 piece puzzles merely by raking their hands through ALL those pieces.

Which one are you? A sorter or a raker?

I used to be a ‘ raker ’ and now for the life of me I can

’t even imagine not sorting all the pieces. I must have spent endless hours raking through the box looking for pieces. My Hubby would just look at me in despair and say,

“ why don ’t you just lay them all out so you can see them much easier and pick out the ones you need?” . I soon started to lean towards that way as he was occasionally joining me to assemble a puzzle. And I wanted him to keep joining me so I felt if I laid the pieces out for him he would not lose interest in doing puzzles with me. Even though he was not very good at doing them - it was his company I enjoyed.

But that also got me addicted to doing extensive sorting. Now I sort 4000+ pieces according to colours/shades and lay them onto the white foam boards. Each foam board takes an average of 500 pieces so that also gives me a gage as to how many pieces I have left to assemble on a given puzzle.

I am not a fast puzzler either. I can do an average of 100 pieces per hour IF the image it not complex. My fastest speed on a 1000 piece puzzle is about 6 hours on the Brand Cloudberries, titled Pixels and its size is (approx.) 27" x 19" .

Even with all my years of puzzling I have never really increased in speed, per say in the time it takes to do the actual assembly. I’ ve gotten faster at sorting though ;)