10 April 2020

In this time of education from home, I’ve been having to educate Simon and Josh on the correct-according-to-Heather terminology for jigsaw puzzle pieces. I don’t see my role in life as an educator, but we all must step up to the plate in this time of social distancing, so I humbly and every so graciously accepted that this would be my role this morning.

Obviously, and I’m sure you are all aware of this, there are four basic jigsaw puzzle piece shapes – not counting the edge pieces. Please don’t bother googling – the internet has not been educated properly yet. They only talk about innies and outies, and knobs and ears and wings. Totally confusing and lacking in any sort of assistance for the jigsawing world. The pieces are quite obviously either:

1. Upsy-Downsies 🧩 are, in my mind, the bread and butter of jigsaw life. You may think you can solve a jigsaw by only working on the deformed looking pieces, but your pathway to the wonky pieces is through the upsy-downsies. Surely that’s pretty straight forward?

2. Three prongers – they have three prongs. Is that understandable or do you need a picture?

3. Two prongers – I can see this is getting a little technical for some of you. Please let me know if you’re struggling and I’ll send you a fact sheet.

4. Stompies (or stumpies – apparently my pronunciation of this is a bit dodgy because a good portion of our lecture this morning dwelt on whether I thought the puzzle pieces had stumpy legs, or whether I thought they stomped, on account of their stumpy legs. If you’re playing along at home, this is the puzzle piece with one knob at top and two stumpy legs. They are further identified as “lying down to the left stumpy” and “lying down to the right stumpy”. Also “upside down stumpy”, obviously.

Now that you are fully educated in correct terminology, I’m sure you will be able to solve that 3000 piece jigsaw puzzle of a blue sky much quicker.

Good luck!