While the Drummer continues to be embraced by the town, communal puzzling can be a support to the residents, as well.
The Bates College Historian Dr. Anne Williams—perhaps the foremost living authority on jigsaw puzzle history—noted the astonishing increase in the sale of puzzles during the Great Depression. Despite the climbing unemployment and precarity of incomes, sales of the dissected images in 1933 were hitting the tens of millions in the United States.
Photos by Ed Judge and Jay Harder
They offered what Williams called, “escape from the troubled times” and “replaced outside entertainment like restaurants and nightclubs,” a description that likely sounds familiar to many contemporary readers.
Another boom in American jigsaw puzzle popularity came in the spring of 2020 when manufacturers and retailers saw an increase of up to 400 percent in demand over the previous year as fear of infection and stay-at-home orders spread across the country. Long-planned events like concerts, conferences and competitions were abruptly halted.
Curiously, one such unexpected cancellation was the second annual World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, an event that had just launched the previous year in Valladolid, Spain. A few years and rounds of vaccinations later, the event is back and continues to gain popularity.
— by Brian Dawson