Nether Regions

1260 pieces

This puzzle is the largest puzzle I have ever cut. It is a 24” x 36” poster of a Barbara Wallace painting. The original poster has a 3” solid black margin around its edge. I came up with the unique idea of cutting the edge into seaweed- or coral- like “fingers”, which (in my opinion) make the puzzle much more visually appealing than if a straight edge had been used.

This puzzle was displayed as one the examples of modern puzzle cutters in “Cutting a Fine Figure: The Art of the Jigsaw Puzzle”, which was an exhibit on the history of jigsaw puzzles held by the Museum of our National Heritage in Lexington, Mass, from February to June of 1995.

In the close-up below you can see the “multiple figure-piece scene” that I cut into the puzzle. On the horizontal part of the middle red plant is sitting a fisherman holding a fishing pole. Below him (in the blue “fan-like” part of the fish) is a fish made of 3 pieces (the 3 pieces interlock via fins that act as knobs). The fish is about to bite a worm on a hook. Here’s the neat part: the hook is connected up to the end of the fishing pole not by an actual piece, but by a straight cut (with some occasional knobs) that stands out against the curl-style cuts of the pieces around it. This straight cut makes the viewer see a line running from the fishing rod to the hook, thus completing the scene. Yet when assembling the puzzle, these interior straight lines confuse the puzzler. For this picture, I also removed the intricate “tall ship” figure piece from the yellow fish tail.