A well chosen 1000 piece puzzle puts up more of a fight than a 3000 with a friendly picture. Keep that in mind before you buy a difficult jigsaw puzzle, especially if the last one took a weekend and you now want something that fights back. The instinct is to reach for more pieces, and sometimes that really is what's missing. Often it isn't.
What makes a jigsaw puzzle difficult
The first thing is the image. A puzzle moves forward because your eye recognises areas: a red roof, a window, a character's face. Each recognisable area is a small island that closes up on its own. The fewer islands there are, the more the work comes down to piece shapes, one by one, by trial and error.
That is why the hardest images are the ones with no centre. Clear skies and whole seas in a single colour. Repeating patterns, like marbles or ornaments. Collages where everything has the same intensity and nothing draws the eye. A landscape photo with half its area in water has that half made up almost entirely of plain pieces, told apart only by their cut.
Next comes piece size. Educa's Miniature series fits 1000 pieces into 46 x 30 cm, like the Sistine Chapel in Miniature, and the product page rates it expert level. The image is the same as in other formats. The difference is that each piece carries very little information and calls for strong light and a watchmaker's patience.
Only in third place comes the number of pieces. More pieces mostly means more time and more space: a 5000 takes weeks of evenings and a whole table. That is stamina more than difficulty. Combine it with an image that has no reference points and it gets serious.
One detail few people consider: doing the puzzle without looking at the box. Any puzzle goes up a full level with that rule, and it costs nothing.
Buying a difficult puzzle: the ladder, from the bottom rung to the top
We put this order together for people who have already finished several 1000 piece puzzles without much drama. Each rung adds a new kind of difficulty to the one before.
- Kirkjufellsfoss Waterfall, Educa, 1000 pieces. A landscape photograph from Iceland, 68 x 48 cm. Water and sky give large plain areas. There are still reference zones, which is why it is the first rung, but it already makes you work pieces by shape.
- Stranger Things, Clementoni, 1000 pieces. Part of the Impossible line: a composition of overlapping badges and pins, edge to edge. If you are a fan of the series, knowing the references helps a little. Only a little.
- Impossible Jolly Christmas, Clementoni, 1000 pieces. A dense collage of vintage Christmas decorations, baubles, a nutcracker, tin toys, with no focal point at all. Great for December, if you want a Christmas puzzle that does not get finished in an afternoon.
- Colorboom Marbles, Clementoni, 1000 pieces. Hundreds of coloured marbles with subtle shifts in tone. No lines, no scenery, nothing to follow except colour and cut. In our view, it is the most demanding 1000 we stock.
- Japanese Collage, Educa, 4000 pieces. From here on, volume joins in. A collage of 136 x 96 cm means a whole dining table taken over for weeks.
- Orcas and Wolves, Educa, 4000 pieces. The same 136 x 96 cm, with nature: fur, water, snow. The product page rates it very difficult.
- Astrology, Educa, 5000 pieces. Star signs, constellations, nebulae in pink, blue and gold, 157 x 107 cm. Expert level on the product page. It gives you access to Educa's lost piece service, which is reassuring on a puzzle like this.
- Star Wars Universe Epic Collection, Trefl, 13,500 pieces. The top of the ladder. It finishes at about 194 x 136 cm and is a job for months. The box includes a guide poster. For this one, think about the room before you think about the table.
The three Impossible puzzles and the Colorboom are the same size as a normal Clementoni 1000 (about 70 x 50 cm). They fit on a normal dining table, and the time they take comes from the picture, not the size.
Before you climb a rung
People who jump straight from 1000 to 4000 usually underestimate the space, not the difficulty. Think about where the unsorted pieces will go, because they take up almost as much room as the puzzle itself.
For an Impossible, it helps to sort pieces by shape (how many tabs and how many blanks) right at the start, as well as by colour. It sounds excessive until you have been stuck for half an hour holding forty yellow pieces. We gathered more tips like this in our guide to Clementoni Impossible puzzles.
The whole Impossible line is in the Clementoni Impossible collection. The big formats, from 2000 pieces up, are in 2000 pieces or more.
Every puzzle arrives new and sealed. If, once it is home, you feel you went one rung too high, you have 14 days to return it unopened. We ship from Portugal to Spain (3.90 €, about 5 working days) and the rest of Europe (from 9.90 €, free from 200 €, about 7 working days).
