The oddly shaped thin piece

There is something quite addicting about working on a jigsaw puzzle. Perhaps, it is the feeling that comes as you try a piece and it fits. (I usually tap my finger down hard on the newly fitted piece a few times, victoriously.) Perhaps, it’s the simple fact that as pieces are put together it makes the rest of the puzzle easier. The loose pieces held in the bottom of the box dwindle and clues as to where the next piece will go are constantly changing and updating?visible progress is being made.

I’ve set myself up on the kitchen table in my apartment in Brooklyn with a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that my Dad gave me when I was home for Christmas.

It’s a pretty lame one in a lot of ways, a painting of a sunset over a lake with lots of swirling blues, reflected puffy clouds and a cabin amidst a bunch of evergreens. But I like it. It’s painted by a guy named Jeff Tilt and it says so, in a terrible curly font, on a pink and yellow box.

My roommate Mark and I rarely use the kitchen table. We rarely eat at home together and when we do, we usually eat while watching a movie or a TV show. (The Wire is my new favorite.) In long stretches of not being used, the kitchen table becomes a catchall for magazines, knick-knacks and other random clutter. I sold the idea of letting me do the puzzle on the table by explaining that it would keep it clean. He agreed.

I’ve enjoyed coming home to the puzzle. It reminds me of my childhood in an interesting way, and it’s challenging because I’m not sure I’ve ever done a puzzle this big on my own. (It’s been years since my Dad and I did one together.) I feel a little out of practice.

“What do you think it’ll be?” a friend asked me yesterday.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“What’s the puzzle turning out to be?”

“I know what it will be. There’s a picture of it on the front of the box.”

“Isn’t that cheating?”

I’ve been wondering about that-is it? It would certainly be more challenging if I didn’t look at the picture, though I think studying the box is what I enjoy about putting together jigsaw puzzles. I hold a piece up to the box and close one eye, scanning the piece over the painting, twisting it and spinning it, trying to figure out where it will go.

I find a tiny detail, a rock next to a stump, and then I find a similarly looking piece and tap the table hard as they fit together.

I can feel it start to snowball, a third piece is added, the rest of the rock, then a fourth, the top of the stump and suddenly it’s a cluster.

I choose an oddly shaped thin piece, dark with a tiny sliver of sky, and it really seems like it should go high on the puzzle where many other matching pieces went, where the dark evergreens meet the sky. I try it and it fits. But when its neighbors, the trees and the mountain, get filled in it is obvious that the oddly shaped thin piece is not in the right place.

I remove it and place it off to the side, outside the border. I wonder about the piece as I go back to the rock, silently considering where it could go and feeling disappointed in having been outsmarted by Mr. Jeff Tilt.

The piece has eluded me for days. Every once in a while I pick it up and twist it in front of the picture and try it in a few places. I haven’t found its home. Yet.

- Zachary Stuart-Pontier