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"Tiling games" best describes jigsaw puzzles. A jigsaw puzzle consists of several oddly shaped pieces, which fit together. Each piece has part of a picture on one surface - fitting all the pieces together correctly reveals a full picture. Pictures are typically related to outdoor scenes, living things, and buildings.
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Jigsaw puzzles for children come in a variety of sizes (measured by the number of pieces), but the pieces are often larger. This makes the puzzles easier to solve. Jigsaw puzzles for adults typically use smaller pieces, and are usually made up of at least 500 pieces. Larger jigsaw puzzles may use 10,000 pieces. Once jigsaw puzzles are completed, the longest dimension of the pictures is usually the width.
Some puzzles are double-sided, so that they can be solved from either side. These adds a degree of difficulty, as it can often be hard to determine which side of the pieces is the one that should be looked at. Three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles are also available.
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Jigsaw puzzles were originally created by painting onto a flat piece of wood. The small pieces were cut out by the use of a jigsaw tool (hence the name of the puzzle).
For mass production, cardboard is used in most modern jigsaw puzzles. An enlarged image is glued onto the cardboard before it is cut with complex metal dies.
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Once all the pieces are fitted together in a jigsaw puzzle, a picture is revealed. The picture is normally known beforehand, as it is usually on the box as a guide. In the past, people have glued completed puzzles together. This practice is rarer today, as jigsaw puzzles are no longer as much a novelty as they once were.
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