Hi, I’m Chandler and I’m a puzzle hater. Honestly, I don’t know how I got to be like this. My mother often spends her mornings hunched over a puzzle board, happily piecing together a 1,000-piece winter landscape. Meanwhile, I’m sitting somewhere nearby staring at my phone. I like to think we are equally content; she organized puzzle pieces by shade, and I doom scrolls through my FYP. But I’m starting to suspect I might be missing something.
Plagued by these suspicions, I spoke to a puzzle rental subscription service called To complete the puzzle. The brand talks about puzzles, not as a boring chore (as I might describe them), but as a conscious hobby that can slow down racing tanks, reduce anxietyand acts as a (screen-free) mental reset. Intrigued by these purported mental health benefits, I decided to try to puzzle my mental health for an entire week. Read on for the results of my puzzling mini-experiment, plus some helpful hints and tips from puzzle pros.
Why puzzles?
Although I grew up puzzling, Catherine Manning didn’t officially revisit the hobby until she found she needed some of a digital detox. “I use puzzlement now as my way of not looking at a screen,” she says. “It’s almost meditative to me.” At the same time, Manning makes it a point to puzzle in peaceful settings, never rushing himself. One rainy day, she listened to all the Marvel movies in chronological order while puzzling. “I don’t do puzzles for sport, I do puzzles for leisure,” she explains.
“I don’t do puzzles for sport, I do puzzles for leisure.”
Rebecca Brunson describes a similar reintroduction to puzzling. Before she picked up a Christmas-themed puzzle at the store, she hadn’t touched one in nearly 10 years. But she quickly found herself hooked again, doing puzzles over breakfast, staying up late to work on the puzzle, and looking for pieces all day. “It occurred to me that I was using it as a stress reliever,” Brunson says. “Every time I got frustrated or something got too much, all I wanted to do was go do my puzzle.”
Chloe Solane relates to these calming effects, as does her grandmother. Solane says they often puzzled together, often got lost in them. Looking back, she suspects the hobby was a good way for her grandmother to find some mental peace. “Putting puzzles together can require intense focus, which in turn helps quiet the internal noise,” says Solane. “You notice it when you’re young, but it’s definitely more useful in adulthood.”
Tips from puzzle professionals
As I prepared to embark on my own puzzle journey, I asked these puzzle pros if they had any recommendations. Here are seven tips they’d give to baffling newbies like me:
- Go slowly: There’s no point in rushing your puzzle – especially if you’re trying to reap mental health benefits. “There’s no pressure to finish quickly,” Brunson says. “It’s nice to just slow down and do something in (your) spare time.”
- Start small: It can be tempting to search for the most advanced puzzle you can find, but Solane recommends mastering a puzzle with a few hundred pieces first. “I was a little overzealous and bought a big puzzle when I got back into it a couple of years ago,” she says. “I never finished it.”
- Create a cozy puzzling space: It’s easier to puzzle for mental health if you have a space you look forward to puzzle in. “Put on a podcast, put on a movie. Something in the background that you can still listen to,” suggests Manning.
- Invest in high quality puzzles: “Not all puzzles are created equal, and it’s very frustrating when you get a cheap puzzle and the pieces don’t quite fit together,” says Brunson. She likes the Eurographics brand (and I can also attest to the Spilsbury puzzle I got from Completing the Puzzle).
- Don’t force yourself to quit: It’s OK if you don’t stop loving the puzzle you’re working on. “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to finish every puzzle you start,” says Solane. “Life is too short to continue working with someone you are no longer committed to.”
- Find puzzle styles you like: “I think it’s really important to find a style of puzzle that you enjoy doing because you’re more likely to go back to it,” Brunson says. For example, Manning likes color-blocking puzzles, while Solane prefers puzzles with cozy or holiday-themed graphics.
- Work from the outside in: “Place the border together first,” advises Solane. “It makes it easier to see how (the puzzle) is going to come together, and it feels less daunting.”
My experience
It may sound silly, but I rightly dreaded this experiment. I was feeling a little overwhelmed and reluctant to give up my usual morning screen time. I also didn’t have a puzzle board, so I had to work on top of old vinyls (which actually turned out to be a good solution). In an effort to motivate myself, I took the puzzle pro’s advice and set the scene: iced coffee, pumpkin candles, and “Gilmore Girls” on the TV. Now in full cozy mode, it was easier to get started.
I started by finding all the edges of my 300 piece puzzle. But to be honest, it didn’t turn out to be very helpful. What worked better was to sort the puzzle pieces by color or pattern and then fill in small pieces at a time. In the beginning, I often fought the urge to quit (or better yet, forcefully stitch the pieces together). But as the week went on, I looked forward to my screen-free mornings. The dopamine I got from putting together even a small part of the puzzle was far better than the doom-scrolling I was used to. Time flew by and I found myself wishing my puzzling sessions were longer.
My takeaways
As a former puzzle hater, I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress in a short amount of time. While I still found it a little frustrating to puzzle over, this experiment gave me a new conscious hobby to turn to — one that offers some much-needed respite from the internet. I definitely related to the puzzle players who felt more grounded after puzzling, and was really surprised to find such a good flow over the course of the week. I wouldn’t call it a quick fix or a magic cure, but overall, puzzling helped me feel happier, calmer, and clearer—all of which are huge wins for my mental health.
Chandler Plante (she/her) is a social producer and staff writer for the Health & Fitness team at Popsugar. She has over five years of industry experience, previously working as an editorial assistant for People magazine, social media manager for Millie magazine and contributor for Bustle Digital Group. She holds a degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and is based in Los Angeles.
