Elemental

I couldn’t make a mini jigsaw this time, but I love the reason why.

I’d bought three wildly-different jigsaws, because you had to buy three to get the discount and why buy three that are similar. I did that once and learnt my lesson the boring way.

The first to be tackled in this set was an educational puzzle. 500 larger-sized pieces with a pocket-sized reference book “full of fascinating facts about SCIENCE”. I learnt something about the periodic table, so it lived up to its marketing.

The lovely feature of this jigsaw is the pairing of each element with an image associated with one of its uses. So, when selecting pieces that captured something of my experience, I gravitated to some of my favourite images and the crisp white lines that divided the table.

Unfortunately, the puzzle pieces are so unique (if it’s possible to have degrees of uniqueness!) and my frustration levels started to build while trying to combine them in a mini jigsaw.

I then laughed with the realisation that these are elements and I’m not a chemist! Are fireworks (strontium) even supposed to go with nuclear submarines (hafnium)? I wouldn’t know, in part because I’d never heard of hafnium before.

When they wouldn’t join nicely, I decided that a photo of them as separate pieces in a grid formation was the way to distil this experience.

Series notes

In this photographic series called “Mini Jigsaws”, I select a small number of odd pieces from a puzzle just completed and re-assemble them. The aim is to distill something of the experience thrown up by this particular puzzle.

This was a North Parade Publishing Ltd puzzle called “Periodic Table”; an educational puzzle of 500 larger-sized pieces with a pocket-sized reference book “full of fascinating facts about SCIENCE”.

PS:

Next … so small and so very yellow.