1000 piece puzzles | 1000 it’s the magic number

Why 1000 piece puzzles?

Here at Pennywinks we are all about creating the best 1000 piece puzzles by taking the puzzler out of reality and into a different world. 1000 piece puzzles are the perfect size to display all the hidden details within our artwork and this helps the user to get absorbed into the puzzle. The completed jigsaw size is also great for displaying and saving once complete.

Hundreds of hours go into making the artwork for our 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. It’s important that the puzzler spends a good amount of time with the puzzle, getting intimate with the strange characters and objects in the world. Finding all the interesting, hard to spot details. This helps transport the puzzler into the other world. Jigsaws with 1000 parts require the puzzler to invest many pleasant hours into solving the puzzling as opposed to the experience being over too quickly.

Let's talk about the difficulty level. Jigsaws with one thousand parts require more time investment than a 500 or 750 puzzle but it's really the design of the artwork and quality of the puzzle (shape variety and cut) that determines the difficulty level. We believe the best 1000 piece puzzles intentionally guide the user when solving the puzzle to ensure the time spent on the 1000 piece jigsaw is very enjoyable as opposed to frustrating. Jump to the next section to see things that a good 1000 piece jigsaw design should have.

Our Pennywinks 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles

... size and cut

Let's get into the specific attributes of our 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles, starting with size. We make our 1000 piece jigsaws larger than average size. A completed Pennywinks puzzle is 75 x 52 cm (29.5 x 20.5 inches). This has three benefits. Firstly, by being bigger, the puzzler has the ability to discover all the hidden details within our artwork more easily. Secondly a bigger completed jigsaw size means bigger individual parts which displays the puzzle details more clearly making it easier for the puzzler to see where to place it. Ultimately this makes the jigsaw more pleasant to solve. Lastly the completed artwork is a great size to admire and even display on your wall.

Let’s discuss our 1000 piece puzzles die cut. The what? The die cut refers to the shape of the puzzle pieces and the cutting process (how we create the parts from the whole cardboard at the time of manufacturing). Everyone of the 1000 shapes in our jigsaws are unique and shaped slightly differently. This has a positive improvement to the experience of the jigsaw because it’s difficult to force a part of the puzzle into it’s incorrect place. Conversely if you have a jigsaw die cut with lots of repeating shapes it can be very frustrating to find the correct place for each jigsaw part as they will fit lots of different places. Equally important is the quality of the cut. Our jigsaws are cut using the sharpest cutting technique possible which results in a very clean cut (no rough edges) which means our jigsaws tightly interlock together.

How our artwork creates the right difficulty level

Moving onto our fantasy jigsaw puzzle artwork. We believe we have the best 1000 piece puzzles artwork, literally hundreds of hours go into creating it to ensure it’s perfect for puzzling. We believe it’s absolutely critical that the artwork is made and designed with the intent of being a very fun image to puzzle, why? A beautiful image may be great to look at but infuriating to puzzle. When we are working with our artists to create the unique artwork for the one thousand jigsaws here are some of the design principles we follow to make the artwork enjoyable for puzzling:

• Break up the fantasy world into identifiable sections - having one continuous scene can be very challenging to solve by designing a few different areas within the world this makes the whole puzzle a lot more enjoyable. As opposed to trying to find where each part of the jigsaw first within the entire artwork, if the puzzler can narrow down the particular section it becomes a lot more manageable.
• Make each section have a unique colour theme.
• No larger areas of the same colour - this is a big no no for a Pennywinks design.
• Minimize dark sections - these are very difficult to solve, especially at night. However it’s fine to have some to add atmosphere to the artwork and some difficult to the puzzle but we will always sprinkle in a few helping design elements within the dark sections.
• Maximize Unique patterns or elements that are easy to identify in a single part of the puzzle.