Kelly’s Puzzle Story: 

Kelly S. (she/her) lives in California, and is one of the USAJPA’s top Speed Run winners from 2023! She is a math professor at a community college, and uses real-life puzzling data in her statistics class. Kelly attended her first speed puzzling competition in 2021, when her friend Wendy invited her to an event in San Diego. Kelly loves the problem solving aspect of puzzling and deciding which strategy to use: how to sort, who should build what in a team competition, whether or not starting with the edges will be advantageous.

Kelly considers herself lucky to be based in San Diego, where she has the ability to attend competitions several times a month at local breweries. Getting to puzzle and enjoy an IPA is her jam, though her team won’t let her forget the time she needed a restroom break in the middle of a competition! Kelly is grateful to be in the same city as USAJPA Board Member Aly K., who kindly passes along speed puzzles for her to practice.

Kelly looks forward to ongoing SpeedPuzzling.com events, competing at in-person events with Pacific Puzzlers, and of course the USA Jigsaw Nationals!

Q&A Time:

What is your best advice for someone who wants to improve their speed puzzling abilities?

“Try different strategies, and be willing to be flexible in the moment and move on when something isn't going quickly.”

How does Speed Running differ from normal speed puzzling?

“In a normal speed puzzle, you will likely only do the puzzle once, so you pick a strategy and go with it. With a Speed Run, you get to experiment with different strategies. I never did “edges first” for the Intentional Kindness puzzle, even though I know others tried that method. It is an eye-opening experience because some of the strategies you think are faster for you are actually slower. For instance, I prefer to build as I flip pieces and see where they go together, but found that I was consistently faster when I flipped all the pieces facing up first. You also find yourself memorizing the individual puzzle pieces which allows the solving to be meditative, with no awkward slogs where you aren’t putting in a piece for a period of time. 

What did you learn from doing Speed Runs?

“I learned that I need to clear a space in the middle for my build after dumping pieces out of the box, especially since I don’t build edges first. It saves a ton of time to not have loose pieces in the center if you have a large enough work space. I built small sections of a puzzle in my early attempts, but was greatly slowed down with the struggle of trying to connect those sections. By the end, I was building everything off of a starting section rather than building small sections.”

What do you like or dislike about Speed Running?

“I loved that it was actually somehow relaxing to do a puzzle you already knew even when trying for breakneck speeds. You also have new realizations about puzzling strategies which you wouldn’t discover through regular speed puzzling. You learn new things when you do back-to-back runs to see how things change. I disliked how puzzles are definitely not made for aggressive Speed Running! My poor copy of Intentional Kindness is now a 504-piece puzzle because the pieces understandably fell apart.”

Are you active in the puzzle community?

“In addition to attending local competitions, our team is headed to Nationals again thanks to a sponsorship from AO Reed! I also just bought myself a 300-piece groupie membership with SpeedPuzzling.com as a birthday present, but those weekend puzzles are hard with a kid running around the house!”

What do you enjoy most about the puzzle community?

“How welcoming everyone is. It's competitive, but that is second to the love of puzzling. I mean, we are all constantly chatting about how to improve times and helping each other get better.”

Do you have a favorite brand, type, or style of puzzle?

“I try to avoid anything larger than 750 pieces. I'm not picky and tend to just take any 300 or 500-piece puzzles at our local exchange. I hope that makes me a better puzzler as I'll do any image/brand I can get my hands on. I do love a Charles Wysocki, not because I love the style, but because I find Americana puzzles to be fast for me to complete. I also enjoy irregular cut puzzles, like ones from Bits & Pieces.”

Connect:

Although Kelly doesn’t have a social media presence, you can see how speed puzzling makes a prominent appearance on her syllabus: https://sites.google.com/view/150withspoon/home