Ten Things I Didn't Know About Jigsaw Puzzles...

1. that jigsaw puzzles for adults have been around for 100 years. Contemporary [early 1900s] writers depicted the inexorable progression of the puzzle addict from the skeptic who first ridiculed puzzles as silly and childish to the perplexed puzzler who ignored meals while chanting "just one more piece," to the bleary-eyed victor who finally put in the last piece in the wee hours of the morning.



2. that early jigsaw puzzle pieces were cut out on the lines in the picture, which meant no interlocking pieces and no pieces that showed adjacent elements in the picture.



3. that early jigsaw puzzles for adults did not include pictures of the assembled puzzle.



4. that early jigsaw puzzles, priced out of the range of the average worker (10% of monthly take-home pay), were often the featured entertainment at high society weekend parties.



5. that Parker Brothers stopped manufacturing games in 1909 in order to produce jigsaw puzzles full time.



6. that jigsaw puzzles became a kind of therapy during the Great Depression. Puzzles seemed to touch a chord, offering an escape from troubled times as well as an opportunity to succeed in a modest way.



7. that unemployed craftsmen created the affordable jigsaw puzzle in their home workshops during the Great Depression.



8. that, during the Great Depression, libraries and drugstores rented jigsaw puzzles and newstands sold weekly jigsaw puzzles every Wednesday.



9. that the first ever world's most difficult jigsaw puzzle--Convergence--challenged hundreds of thousands of Americans in 1965.



10. that wooden jigsaw puzzles, once the playthings of the rich, are making a comeback today.

Reference: Williams, Anne. Jigsaw Puzzles: A Brief History. http://www.mgcpuzzles.com/mgcpuzzles/puzzle_history/literature_on_puzzles.htm