Puzzle Journey — Chapter 1

This journey started in Fall 2016 and concludes Summer 2017.

One of my early paintings.

I stumbled into puzzle design, but the journey that enabled me was very deliberate. I have always had many ideas ranging from outlandish to million dollar startups (unrealized) to incremental ways to make my life easier at work or home. I wanted to experiment with these ideas, but they need to be compartmentalized. What’s realistic? What can be done at work? What can be done outside of work while remaining employed? Can the boundaries that I have for these ideas be adjusted? I resolved to rewrite these boundaries for my ideas in an effort to keep my ideas and my creative self present both at home and at work. For the purposes of this essay, I’ll be focusing on my ideas at home.
My most promising ideas, economically speaking, are the ones that my company would probably take issue in. What then, given these constraints, would be a good idea? I decided to paint. Painting is something that could absorb as much creativity as I could throw at it, it can be done on my own time, and with a bit of luck, could be sold without having to worry about concerns from my employer. What kind of asshole would you have to be to get mad at someone for painting? Assuming I’m not falling behind at work. I resolved to paint every day. It could be experimenting with color swatches, pumping out a full work, or just making a bit of a mess. “Painters paint,” I would tell myself. This was winter 2016.

Here are some selected paintings from this time.

Here I am creating a reddit secret santa gift.

It was at this table where my first puzzle came to me. I can’t explain exactly how it came to me, but I know it came from two puzzles: Square in the Bag and an old puzzle I only know as “Two piece pyramid”. Fortunately, I had a tetrahedron paperweight lying around, which I used as the centerpiece for my first puzzle prototype. It was made out of canvas cut from an old backpack, velcro strips, and hot glue.

I would carry this around with me everywhere and force it on people. I learned that many people don’t like puzzles at all and get nervous or anxious, especially if they weren’t expecting it. This didn’t stop me from presenting it to anyone.

Through forcing the puzzle on people, I did learn how to improve it. I remember the shop owner of “Eureka Puzzles”, in Brookline MA asking, “Well it’s nice, but couldn’t it be made with one piece?”

At the time, I thought he was an idiot and didn’t understand the puzzle, but by the time I got home, I already had two new ‘levels’. One, the bag, very closely matches Square in the Bag and a second, Band. The square is most elegant, but least original. Below are some spoilers of how to use the puzzle. These photos are of the prototypes I used to sent to the IPP in 2017. All the work was done myself. Prior to this project, I had never used a sewing machine.

I had beers a few times with FLEB, and I had made him a custom version of the puzzle in his colors.

That’s it. I was officially a puzzle designer. I sent it off to the IPP and kept my fingers crossed. They didn’t particularly like it, but after the event, a few people reached out to see if they could purchase a copy. In the next chapter, I’ll bring you through the journey of improving the quality of this puzzle, manufacturing this puzzle, and getting them shipped all over the world.