~ A puzzle tests your logic. A jigsaw puzzle tests your patience and vision.~
Have you heard, “All jigsaw puzzles are puzzles, but not all puzzles are jigsaws.”? Puzzles are a useful game for brain development. From brain-storming riddles in newspapers to fill-in-the-blank games, everything is conceptualised as puzzles. The word “puzzle” covers a wide range of activities. But still, people use “puzzle” and “jigsaw puzzle” interchangeably. But in reality, they are both different. Let’s understand how-
Understanding World of Mystery- Puzzles
At its core, a puzzle is one of the oldest forms of brain training in human life. You can say it is a part of human evolution as well. Basically, any problem or game designed to test your intelligence, knowledge, or skill is known as a puzzle. But what exactly makes puzzles interesting is that a puzzle is not just one problem or game; it consists of a variety of activities and concepts. In the disguise of entertainment, puzzles are an ecosystem of mental exercises.
Jigsaw Puzzle: Where Chaos Becomes a Picture
Jigsaw Puzzles are a specific type of puzzle that is designed with different shapes, cuts, images, concepts, themes, and materials. A picture or image is fragmented into different pieces. Those pieces are of different shapes. You have to fit those irregular pieces in the right pattern to complete the picture.
Jigsaw puzzles, which consist of hundreds or thousands of seemingly random pieces that magically reorganise into a complete, beautiful image, are fundamentally the ultimate transformation experience. Every dispersed fragment has a single ideal home just waiting to be found in this well-planned chaos with a lovely happy ending.
Know How Puzzles Differ from Jigsaw Puzzles
The world of puzzles and jigsaw puzzles is different. There are significant differences between them. Let’s find out about them -
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Goals are Poles Apart
Although both Puzzles and Jigsaw puzzles are designed for mental exercise, but goals of both of them are poles apart. Traditional puzzles like crosswords, sudoku, logical games, riddles, or wordscapes are designed to practice and test problem-solving skills, vocabulary, and reasoning skills with different exercises.
On the other hand, Jigsaw puzzles are created by fragmenting a large image into pieces of different shapes, which you have to assemble and fit in the right pattern and at the right position to complete as the picture. One is an exercise in solving a question or mystery, and the other is a focused journey towards a beautiful picture, image or memory.
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Types are Different
The world of puzzles is very vast. Puzzles are different activities like riddles, sudoku, mechanical puzzles, word games, equations, reasoning, and much more. These puzzle activities are designed to exercise cognitive abilities.
Jigsaw puzzles are basically a subset of puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles are of different kinds, like 3D puzzles, cardboard puzzles, plastic puzzles, wooden jigsaw puzzles, personalised puzzles, and many more. Each type of jigsaw puzzle is visually different and offers different tactile experiences, but their sole goal is the same, i.e, fitting different puzzle pieces together to complete a big picture.
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Different Game, Different Gains
Both puzzles and jigsaw puzzles belong to brain-stimulating activities, but their focused skill set is different. Both provided different benefits. Like, Jigsaw puzzles boost visual-spatial reasoning, improve pattern recognition, and improve patience and focus. In fact, Customised jigsaw puzzles can even help in strengthening family bonds.
On the other hand, puzzles help in improving memory power, boost problem-solving skills like mathematical reasoning, generate thinking capacity, improves memory power, and prepare a base for basic education. Basically, you are playing two different games, and each provides different benefits and helps in improving different skill sets.
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Paces are Two Sides of a Coin
The pace of puzzles is highly opposite to jigsaw puzzles. The pace of puzzles is fast. It's like a quick task. For example, Riddles can be solved within 5 minutes, or quizzes can also be solved within a couple of minutes. All puzzle activities are quick and fast. But the pace of the jigsaw puzzle is calm and relaxed. You can take your time to solve the jigsaw puzzle. There is no timer for you to fit the right piece in the right position. You can just relax while solving jigsaw puzzles without any stress of time constraints. It is a screen-free activity that can be done with patience and a calm mind.
Conclusion:
Both Puzzle and Jigsaw puzzles fall under the umbrella of brain challenges. They are different from each other in terms of objective, kinds, benefits, pace, and nature. Knowing about the different types of puzzles and jigsaw puzzles helps you in buying the required game to relax and challenge your mind. In this digital era, mental growth is a major concern, and you need activities that pull you away from screens, and both puzzles and jigsaw puzzles offer exactly that, a chance to boost your focus, improve cognitive abilities, visual-spatial abilities and brain workout.