Many things were different before the Internet changed our lives. If you are over 50, you probably had to write your college essays on a typewriter. If you happened to like jigsaw puzzles, you probably didn’t know any real person around you with the same hobby. As a consequence, most puzzle fans were quite alone and unable to share their passion with anyone. In those times, the book La Fiesta del Puzzle would have been impossible.
Then the Internet was born, filling every vacuum of human interest. Several online forums about puzzles appeared in different countries and in different languages. These forums gathered the disperse puzzle population around online communities. They later formed legal associations, organized competitions, and published puzzle journals for their members. The puzzle world has bloomed in the last 15 years. It was about time that someone would put all that information together and tell us the story.
That’s exactly what Alejandro Darias Mateos has done. He has written and published La Fiesta del Puzzle (The Puzzle Party). It is a book about puzzles and about people that like puzzles. It is the only book in Spanish on this...
Tag Archives: Competition
Puzzle Competition in Spain. Saturday, June 15, 2019
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Jun
Not so long ago, assembling jigsaw puzzles was kind of a solitary passion for most of us. It was something that we enjoyed, but we couldn't share with the people around us. Our friends and relatives had heard about it, of course. However, they probably considered it part of our geeky nature, but nothing more. Meeting someone on any public venue, striking up a conversation and discovering that both shared a common interest for puzzles? Never happened. It was a hobby that we couldn't normally share with anyone. In those times, a puzzle competition was inconceivable.
Internet and puzzle forums
Then, the Internet came to our lives. The Big Jigsaw Puzzle Collection forum at Flickr made the single most decisive contribution to putting together serious puzzle collectors and enthusiasts. For the first time, it was possible to meet online like-minded people. Now it was possible to talk about designs, pieces quality, editions, brands..., and share the passion for puzzles. The fact that most of those people were thousands of miles away from each other was just secondary. At the same time, similar local forums started to...