Pictured above is the paintings used for a puzzle titled “Holidays In New York.” The scene exhibits Rockefeller Middle in Manhattan blanked it snow. Within the middle is the world-famous Christmas tree overlooking the ice skating rink. It’s an iconic illustration of the vacations, and — as each a puzzle and a vacationer vacation spot — would in all probability make for a fairly enjoyable exercise.
For those who needed to go the vacationer route, the expertise would in all probability price you an excellent amount of cash, until you reside domestically. A airplane ticket to New York Metropolis would run you, say, $500; one evening in a lodge would in all probability be roughly the identical. Determine one other few hundred for meals, cabs, buying, and incidentals — that’s a $1,500 two-day journey. And that needs to be cheaper than the puzzle, proper?
Effectively, sure — however that assumes you’re solely within the 100-piece model. As of this writing, that may price you solely (“solely”) $895. Need a 250-piece problem? You’re taking a look at a price ticket of $2,895. The 1,000-piece model? 5 bucks shy of $10,000.
And sure, folks purchase these.
The corporate behind these costly items of items is Stave Puzzles, positioned within the small city of Norwich, Vermont. (Right here’s a map.) Stave was based in 1974 by Steve Richardson and Dave Tibbetts (Steve plus Dave yields “Stave”), two puzzle fanatics who needed to create, of their phrases, “the Rolls-Royce of Puzzles.” The puzzles are made from wooden every one, because the Boston Globe reported, “is meticulously hand-cut, one piece at a time, by a blade no wider than an eyelash. The items are then sanded, polished to shine, and positioned inside a thick signature blue-and-green golden-embossed field.” The field doesn’t have an image of the completed product — a part of the enjoyment, in case you acquired the puzzle as a present, is discovering what you’re constructing as you construct it.
However perhaps “pleasure” isn’t the proper phrase. Richardson — who purchased out Tibbetts early within the firm’s historical past — doesn’t need his puzzles to be straightforward (which, given the value level, is smart!). He calls himself the corporate’s “Chief Tormentor,” and it’s a title that’s well-deserved. He developed a puzzle style he calls “Tips” which the corporate’s web site describes as “a diabolically troublesome style wherein some items will slot in multiple place,” and due to this fact, “may have a number of methods of becoming collectively – however just one right answer.” One such puzzle, Olivia the Octopus, has maybe as many as 10,000 “fallacious” options, which helps clarify its $2,695 price ticket. However at the very least it has an accurate answer — at the very least certainly one of Stave’s puzzles didn’t even that. In response to The Fader, “For an April Fools’ stunt in 1989, Richardson launched a bagel-shaped puzzle, which, although it was made up of simply 5 basic-looking items, was secretly designed to be unsolvable. Folks obtained so upset that he took it off the market and issued refunds.”
Generally, although, clients of Stave are followers of their merchandise and don’t appear to thoughts the value level. In 2011, based on CNN Cash, they “announc[ed] a restricted version, a $4,000 puzzle known as Atlantis” and, by the top of the month, acquired eight pre-orders. And based on an interview with Lancaster Farming, Stave has “quite a lot of clients who spend $10,000 to $20,000 yearly to check their wits, ingenuity, and endurance,” and consists of amongst their clientele “many well-known American households together with the DuPonts, Rockefellers, Gateses, Bushes and Mellons.”
And whereas most of us don’t hail from a type of households, there’s a extra accessible possibility — you may lease a Stave puzzle. It’s nonetheless fairly costly — a one-time, six-week rental will price you solely (once more, “solely”?) $395.
Bonus truth: For many of us, doing puzzles is a pastime. However for Vancouver-based artist Tim Klein, it’s work. However that’s as a result of he does them a bit in another way than everybody else. As he explains on his web site, “a jigsaw puzzle producer sometimes makes use of the identical die-cut sample for a lot of totally different puzzles. This makes the items interchangeable” between the producer’s puzzles. For those who purchase a number of units, you may create bizarre combos of surreal photos — like mixing a horse and a prepare, or Tutankhamun and a Mack truck. You’ll be able to take a look at his montages on his web site, and a few are on the market — for about $2,000. (He’s giving Stave a run for his — and his benefactors’! — cash.)
From the Archives: Cross Phrases: It’s not a couple of jigsaw puzzle, however a couple of crossword puzzle. That counts, proper?
