Wednesday 5 September 2007

Jigsaw

Jigsaw


Jigsaw of rocks. This one is stacked too nicely though.



Jigsaw puzzles were originally created by painting a picture on a flat, rectangular piece of wood, and then cutting that picture into small pieces with a jigsaw, hence the name. John Spilsbury, a London mapmaker and engraver, is credited with commercialising jigsaw puzzles around 1760[1]. Jigsaw puzzles have since come primarily to be made on cardboard.

There are also three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. Many of these are made of wood or styrofoam and require the puzzle to be solved in a certain order; some pieces will not fit in if others are already in place. Also common are puzzle boxes: simple three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles with a small drawer or box in the center for storage.

Another type of jigsaw puzzle, a kind of cross between 2-D and 3-D puzzles, is a puzzle globe. Like a 2-D puzzle, a globe puzzle is often made of cardboard and the assembled pieces form a single layer. Like a 3-D puzzle, the final form is a three-dimensional shape. Most globe puzzles have designs representing spherical shapes such as the Earth, the Moon, and historical globes of the Earth.

(courtesy of wikipedia.com)

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