While I was doing research for upgrading the history section of the page, I stumbled upon this awesome article published in 1972 that has a ton of neat history about the game Spacewar and a lot of other “computing” related things as well.
I loved the word “bum” in the title of the article so much, I decided to use it in the title of this new “Web World” that I made to showcase some neat interactive “game” related experiences.
Touch the 360° image to begin exploring
If you can’t see it, or it isn’t working, you can also see it directly on Kuula.
… but, I had also fallen deeper down the rabbit hole that is Jigsaw Puzzledom.
I couldn’t help noticing that my search for Around the World Jigsaw Puzzle also brought up a video about a different puzzle from Ravensburger entitled Disney Moments. Here’s a mini-documentary about their 40,320 piece monster.
You may have noticed that the video covered just about everything that most normal people would ever want to know about how puzzles are made. However, if you want to know more, then here’s a recent article from the New York Times that I stumbled upon.
Then I got curioius and did some fact checing. Guess what?
The Guinness World Records website says that the jigsaw puzzle with the “mostest” actually had a whopping 551,232 pieces, and it was completed by 1,600 students of the University of Economics in Vietnam.
Nice trivia.
In addition, the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of jigsaw puzzles is held by Luiza Figueiredo in São Paulo, Brazil. This 360° video shows a quick glimpse of her epic collection of 1,047 puzzles.
If you would like to learn more about the history of jigsaw puzzles, then you might also be able to get your hands on the book The jigsaw puzzle: piecing together a history by Anne Williams (the historian featured in the CBS Sunday Morning clip above).
Finally, if you’re still reading this post, let alone doing any of that stuff, then you’ve fallen deep into Jigsaw Puzzledom, too.
If that’s the case, then you should know that you’re in good company. Here’s an article that explains that you belong to a club that includes the likes of Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Bill Gates and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones!
Alas, no matter how great the company, I had to finally drag myself out of Jigsaw Puzzle Land to share this with you, and then get back to work on what I should be doing (i.e. a much needed overhaul of this Cosma web site).
I will leave off here, but if you continue exploring Jigsaw Puzzledom on your own, then there’s a few things you should know.
First, be careful about calling yourself by a term like “Puzzler.” It’s colloquial. The correct, technical term to use is Dissectologist.
On the other hand, if this post has just gotten you in the mood to work a jigsaw puzzle, right here and now, then you will probably enjoy the online puzzles at Jigsaw Explorer!
The other day I was grabbing a snack at a local pub when I noticed what struck me as an odd scene on one of the TVs. At first glance it looked like a couple of people encouraging a large, mobile Pet Rock to win a race. Of course, the sport was Curling, and it was an Olympic Qualification Event. I had “heard of” curling, but I had never seen it played.
It turns out that there is more to the sport than meets the eye. More about that in a minute, but first, for the uninitiated such as myself, it is always good to start with finding out the basics. Here’s a fun little two minute video from Curling Canada that does the job nicely.
Entertaining, but that video doesn’t really explain why the sport’s nickname is “Chess on Ice.” Here’s a video that explains more about curling and mentions the nickname.
There is even a whole Chess on Ice YouTube channel that explains the sport in great detail. Here’s a short introductory video from the channel that starts to give a sense of the complexities of curling strategy.
Better yet, the sport is the subject of a debate among physicists, and there are even scientific papers about it. Here’s a video about the controversy.
This site doesn’t usually deal in silly internet memes (list) like cute cat videos, but it is Friday, and this character on YouTube called FlippyCat went and posted this awesome 360° video.
