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Assembling a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle of a quiet Nova Scotia seascape gave Amy Routledge an adrenaline rush that was almost too much to handle.<\/p>\n
“I was telling everyone earlier \u2026 ‘I need to go run a lap.’ I had a lot of nervous energy,” the Winnipegger said. Her heart “was pounding a little bit” as she sorted cardboard pieces inside a quiet hall in the city’s Norberry-Glenlee Community Centre Saturday.<\/p>\n
Routledge was among the several dozen participants who showed up to the community centre this weekend for what organizers say was the first-ever regional “speed puzzling” competition held in Manitoba.<\/p>\n
“It’s \u2026 exhilarating,” Routledge said. <\/p>\n
“You don’t have to be fast \u2026 [but] it is a little bit of a fun little extra challenge if you put together puzzles and you’re like, ‘I like puzzling, but I could use a little more excitement.'”<\/p>\n
The goal of speed puzzling is pretty simple: the competitor who puts together a jigsaw puzzle the fastest wins.<\/p>\n
Rebecca Waddell, founder of Manitoba Speed Puzzlers and the event’s host, said the fastest participants can assemble 500-piece puzzles in 30 to 45 minutes on their own.<\/p>\n
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More than 70 puzzle fans showed up for the Winnipeg event, which featured separate competitions for individuals, pairs and teams. (Katie Lambe\/CBC)<\/p>\n
“The top people train [doing] several puzzles every day,” Waddell said in an interview with the CBC’s Information Radio ahead of the competition.<\/p>\n
“It really is a sport,” she said. “If you see people walking out of the room after, they’ll be sweating and puzzle dust smeared all over their face. It’s quite an exciting, intense event.”<\/p>\n
LISTEN | First-ever speed puzzle regionals held in Manitoba:<\/p>\n
Information Radio – MB7:48The first ever Manitoba Regional Speed Puzzle Competition takes place this weekend <\/p>\n
The Canadian Jigsaw Puzzle Association\u00a0is hosting the event at Norberry-Glenlee Community Centre. Over a hundred people will be racing to assemble 500 to 1000 piece puzzles. Guest Host Cory Funk speaks to Rebecca Waddell, the organizer of the event.\u00a0‘Ultimately, you compete against yourself’<\/p>\n
Brandon resident Kirsty Williams \u2014 who won the individual competition Saturday \u2014 said she got into speed puzzling about two and a half years ago.<\/p>\n
Her first competition was the world speed puzzling championship held in Spain in 2024, which she attended “for a laugh” after figuring out she could put together a puzzle in 90 minutes or less.<\/p>\n
Williams put together the Nova Scotia puzzle in 41 minutes and 5 seconds.<\/p>\n
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Kirsty Williams, from Brandon, won Saturday’s individual event in Winnipeg. Williams said she listens to ‘a lot of fast-paced emo music’ to get in the zone during speed puzzling competitions. (Katie Lambe\/CBC)<\/p>\n
“When I’ve got a competition coming up, I’ll try and do at least one or two puzzles a day,” she said, practicing a lot “much to my husband’s chagrin.”<\/p>\n
“Sometimes it would just be speed drills,” Williams said. “Just flipping and sorting the edge, seeing how fast I can get that, to just running full-length puzzles \u2026 get my time down, learn different strategies.”<\/p>\n
More than 70 people attended the Winnipeg event to compete in the individual, pairs and team categories.<\/p>\n
Among the prizes are medals \u2014 and puzzles \u2014 as well as a $500 sponsorship award meant to help the fastest puzzlers cover costs to attend the speed puzzling nationals competition in Ontario next year.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately, you compete against yourself,” Routledge said. “‘Can I shave off this time? Can I\u2026flip the pieces faster than the first time?'”<\/p>\n
It’s a “self-motivated sport, which is something I personally love about it,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-827248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}