The Hunt

While the Northeast, and especially Massachusetts, may have dominated jigsaw puzzle making in the past, puzzle makers can be found anywhere today. Here, we have a Spiritwood puzzle cut in 1993 by Charles Ross, a retired North Dakota farmer. Plywood, interlocking with 7 figure pieces, one of which is a most unusual, mulit-piece figure of an indian's head along the upper right border. This figure combines 4 special cutting techniques defined in my article, "Earliest Use of Special Techniques for Making Adult Jigsaw Puzzles": figure piece-appropriate, figure piece-complex, irregular edge-figure and dropout-figure. Very few makers, past and present, use such an advanced combination of special cutting technique in their puzzles.