Teaching · For Teachers

A thousand pieces
is not the whole story.

Two 1,000-piece puzzles can take five hours or thirty, depending on the image. Log each puzzle in a family shelf, classroom tub or club library with what made it hard, the hours it took and anything missing. The log works out pieces per hour, gives the median pace, ranks the collection and keeps the notes the next person needs before they open the box.

Add a puzzleWhat you get
$19one-time · every device you sign in on
Buy · $19

Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the For Teachers toolkit, $79 for 72 items.

Your puzzles

The worked example is made up: a 500-piece garden, a 1,000-piece night sky that ran at under half the usual pace and a 300-piece wooden puzzle with two missing pieces. Saved on this device only.

Loading the puzzle form. If nothing appears, turn on JavaScript.

What you get

Teaching · For Teachers$19

What you finish with
A record per puzzle: title, maker, piece count, kind, the features that make it hard, start and finish dates, hours, who worked on it, a 1 to 5 felt difficulty, pieces missing and five care checks. Works out pieces per hour and a 0 to 5 feature score; gives the collection’s median pace, ranks every puzzle by pace and totals the hours; flags missing pieces, puzzles not counted before shelving, puzzles rated hard with no reason noted and splitting boxes.
Who it is for
Families, classrooms, libraries and puzzle clubs that share a collection, and anyone who likes to keep track.
Format
Browser log with a saved record per puzzle. Prints one puzzle, the whole collection in a table or a blank sheet; downloads a spreadsheet (.csv); exports and imports a file.
Access
$19 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the For Teachers toolkit ($79) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The For Teachers space in Caveat Teaching.
Support
Questions about access, an order or a correction: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

  1. Add each puzzle when you start it.
  2. Tick what makes the image hard.
  3. Note the hours roughly as you go.
  4. Count missing pieces before you break it up.
  5. Label the box for the next person.

Add a puzzle

Difficulty

What makes a jigsaw slowerOne colorSky, sea or snowover a third of theimage.Sort those piecesby shape instead ofcolor.RepeatsTiles, bricks orcandy in rows.Every piece lookslike the one besideit.No edgesRound puzzles, orpuzzles with nostraight pieces.No frame to startfrom.Irregular cutsWooden and whimsypieces in oddshapes.Fewer pieces, butthey fit fewerways.What makes a jigsaw slowerOne colorSky, sea or snow over a third of the image.Sort those pieces by shape instead of color.RepeatsTiles, bricks or candy in rows.Every piece looks like the one beside it.No edgesRound puzzles, or puzzles with no straightpieces.No frame to start from.Irregular cutsWooden and whimsy pieces in odd shapes.Fewer pieces, but they fit fewer ways.
Piece count is only half of difficulty. The log’s feature score counts how many of these a puzzle has; your own pace does the rest.

A teaching tool from the start

The first jigsaw puzzles were maps. A London engraver, John Spilsbury, mounted maps on wood and cut them along country borders in the 1760s so children could learn geography by putting the world back together.

For a classroom tub

A shared puzzle loses pieces fastest when nobody knows how many it should have. Keep the count on the box, a photo of the finished image in the lid and this log on the shelf; students can rate difficulty and compare their pace with the class’s.

Sources

  1. Williams, A. D. (2004). The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History. Berkley Books.
  2. Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood. Dissected maps and the first jigsaw puzzles (vam.ac.uk).
  3. Fissler, P., et al. (2018). Jigsaw puzzling taps multiple cognitive abilities and is a potential protective factor for cognitive aging. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 10, 299.
  4. American Library Association. Library of things and puzzle lending guidance (ala.org).

The worked example is made up. Nothing you type is sent to Caveat. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.