Down the street from the medieval cathedral at the stony heart of Valladolid, Spain, sits the Millennium Dome, a geodesic igloo made out of neon-edged hexagons that slot together like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Inside the dome, thousands more jigsaw puzzle pieces wait in sealed boxes. Contestants from 40 different countries sit at white tables, poised to rip open their box when the timer starts the qualifying round of the 2022 World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships.
A Spanish competitor readies his puzzling fingers. A Turkish puzzler eyes the timer. A Ukrainian contestant nods to her blue-and-yellow supporters.
Behind her American flag, Charlottesville preschool teacher Stephanie Owen waits. She has traveled almost 4,000 miles from Virginia to race against the fastest jigsaw puzzlers in the world.
As a child, when she was home sick from middle school, Owen used to spend her days putting together jigsaw puzzles. As an adult, a positive COVID-19 test renewed her childhood puzzling habits.
“Our family has always been a jigsaw puzzle family,” Owen says. “My grandparents always have a puzzle out on the table when we go. We always do a puzzle with our friends on New Year’s Eve.”
One pandemic night, out of curiosity, Owen set up a clock and time-lapse camera, then watched herself move through a 500-piece puzzle in under one and a half hours.
That’s when she began to wonder if there was such a thing as a jigsaw puzzle race.
When the timer starts, the 60 contestants in Owen’s qualifying round unwrap an image of black dog sitting before a wall of paintings of black dogs.
The sound of cardboard on plastic reverberates through the quiet dome as contestants begin sorting pieces. Each one wants to be the fastest to put all 500 into place.
Some competitors flip over each piece before categorization. Others create color-based piles. The bravest start assembly with most pieces still untouched. Owen begins shaping the border. Officials patrol the aisles in bright yellow World Jigsaw Puzzle Federation vests with cameras and watchful eyes.
Owen methodically spirals inward until all that is left is every puzzler’s nightmare: A wide expanse of fur, one of the most difficult textures in jigsaw.
Her mouth is dry. She cannot waste the moment it would take to sip water, nor can she spare a glance upward when a burst of audience applause signals the first puzzle has been completed. She can only stare intently at her remaining pieces.
“I tried to just stay in the moment, doing the thing that I was there to do, which is putting the pieces together,” Owen says.
With one hand she shoves the 500th piece of black fur into place. With the other, she slams her palm upon the table, signaling her victory to the judge.
Owen is the second American and 15th competitor to finish her qualifier. She has registered the best time of her puzzling career, and earned a spot in the final round of the 2022 World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship.
Day one is over, and for the first time in 58 minutes and 41 seconds, Owen has enough time to unscrew the cap of her water bottle.
In late 2021, Owen’s Google search for jigsaw puzzle races turned up an upcoming Zoom-based competition. She wondered if it could possibly be real.
Days after she signed up, a puzzle wrapped in unmarked paper arrived in Owen’s mailbox. A sticker warned her not to open the package until the timer started for her first-ever speed puzzling competition.
Under the watchful gaze of her laptop camera, Owen crushes her previous times when she completes the 500-piece puzzle in one hour and 30 seconds, giving her a win and the confidence to register for the world championships.
“I think something about the atmosphere and the pressure of it pushes me to think less, and take less time on things, and make faster decisions,” Owen says. “Knowing that I’m competing against other people, not just myself, gives me a thrill.”
Owen’s friends are fascinated by her home puzzle library. They’re stunned when they learn she has an official JPAR score, the puzzling statistic based on the difficulty of competitors’ puzzles.
In contrast, by day two, Valladolid is no stranger to puzzle fever. In cafés and bars around the dome, patrons ignore drinks in favor of practice jigsaws.
A visitor can find puzzles everywhere, from the stones of the cathedral to the hexagons of the Millennium Dome to the rows of white tables where Owen and her nearly 200 fellow competitors wait for the final round to begin.
Ravensburger, the German company that manufactures the puzzles used by World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships, presents finalists with the world premiere of a brand-new puzzle. When the timer starts and Owen opens her bag, she is greeted with a never-before-seen 500-piece rendition of a row of pastel-colored doors.
As always, Owen begins with the border.
When Owen slots her final piece into place, just over one hour has passed. She has officially ranked among the top 50 fastest jigsaw puzzlers in the world.
When she first began competing, Owen worried too much puzzling would burn out her love for her favorite hobby.
But it only took one day after her return to Charlottesville before she was back at Shenanigans, selecting her next jigsaw puzzle.
“I would love to do more competitions,” Owen says. “I don’t have any more on my schedule at the moment, but I’m hoping to find more in-person competitions, along with virtual ones. … It’s a mental exercise for me. It’s meditative. It makes me feel good about myself.”