Tiffany’s Puzzle Story: 

Tiffany M. (she/her) lives in Massachusetts, and placed 7th in the Pairs division (alongside her teammate Alyssa Z.) at the 2023 World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship!

She has loved puzzling since her younger days, but wasn’t able to frequently do puzzles for a period of time as an adult due to space constraints. She happily found her way back to puzzling after finding creative space-saving solutions like rollup mats. She found speed puzzling in October 2021, and was quickly hooked!

Tiffany plans on attending many upcoming puzzle competitions like the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the USAJPA Nationals, and the monthly competitions with SpeedPuzzling.com. 

Q&A Time:

What do you enjoy most about the puzzle community? 

“The puzzle community, and the speed puzzling community within it, has been so welcoming! I've joked a lot recently that between all the competitions and meetups available throughout the year, I see my puzzle friends more than I see most of my family (which while funny, is not an exaggeration). I've gotten to meet and puzzle with so many people from across the country and that just keeps growing!”

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

“If anyone has advice to give me, I would appreciate that! Lol. But what I have found to be helpful is just to try as many different things as possible. Practice with different puzzle brands and images, particularly images that you wouldn't normally gravitate towards. Practice different strategies of puzzling, like starting with edges vs. not. Practice in different environments if possible, and with and without music/headphones. And practice can come in the form of speed puzzling, or just puzzling more intentionally. My natural inclination when speed puzzling is a more chaotic, frantic style of moving as quickly as possible, but I actually became faster when I took the time to slow down, breathe, and make more intentional movements; it may look like you're moving slower, but oftentimes you're moving more effectively which turns out to be faster in the end! Additionally, when I do larger puzzles now (not for speed), I can't help but try to figure out a faster or more efficient way of managing my space and piece placement, even if I'm not timing myself.”

What is the puzzle community like in your area? 

“I wish the puzzle community was more active in New England! Maybe I'm just missing a lot of opportunities because I refuse to give in and create a Facebook account again, but it's fairly quiet around here. There's one store about an hour from where I live that does puzzle competitions a few times a year, and occasionally I'll find a puzzle swap somewhere nearby, but otherwise, it's fairly quiet.”

Do you have a cherished puzzle-related memory?

“Being so new to speed puzzling, it's been really fun and validating to have some top placements in competitions because I tend to be someone with low confidence in my abilities in all aspects of life, and I keep surprising myself in the best way. It's really helped me to be more confident and proud of who I am and what I can accomplish. I attended the 2023 World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship in Spain, where I placed 25th individually, 16th in Teams with my team The Coast to Coast Puzzlers, and 7th in Pairs with my partner Alyssa Z! We had never puzzled together before and somehow made it into the top 10 of all pairs in the World, and got to accept a prize on stage.”

Connect:

Tiffany can be found through Instagram:  @tiffanythepuzzler