The Puzzle Competition Where Everything Went Wrong (Patreon)

Hi everybody and happy puzzle day Sunday! My new video is up all about the puzzle competition I did with Yvonne last weekend. The results weren’t quite what I hoped, but so much went wrong that I’m still happy with where we ended up:

https://youtu.be/RuTm9q3aNok

If you want to watch in real time, you can see the livestreams on the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Associations channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@usajigsaw/streams

And if you want to race us, you can get both puzzles on Amazon here (affiliate links):

Ravensburger Zebras 

Cobble Hill Plates 

I hope that with all of the videos I'm making about speed puzzling, I've inspired some of you to try it for yourself. Even if you're not competitive with it, a local contest is a great way to meet other puzzlers in your area. You can see a map listing all of the in-person events right here.

You guys know that I’m going to be at World’s in Spain, but I wanted to let you all know that I also just signed up for the California State Championships in Redwood City in November. Just wait until you hear who I'm puzzling with.

I also wanted to share that when I was looking up the Spanish times for the Zebras puzzle, I found this page with lots of competition results from Spain. If you want to practice your speed puzzling, you can get the same puzzles and then compare your times to the winners. (Scroll down past the sign-ups to get to the ones that say Clasificacion)

Bonus Puzzle Competition Video

As promised, I’m making public my Orange County puzzle competition video from February as a thank you for signing up for this newsletter. You can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/rUoKTfTG2rM

Exclusive Content

For my paid patrons this week, I decided to share the full clip of Yvonne and I playing Puzzle Chess. So if you want to find out who won, you can sign up for one of the paid levels and see us battle it out!

And as you've seen on my Instagram story, I've also started working on my next 9000 piece puzzle. I'll be sharing some exclusive sneak peeks of the video to my paid patrons later this week!

Other Puzzle News

If you’re not on TikTok, you may have missed this crazy viral puzzle moment. Puzzletokkkk solved the Color Changing Puzzle from The Play Group and it’s up to over 13 million views!

I solved the same one on YouTube a couple of years ago, so here is my video of me struggling through it.

Speaking of TikToker’s, let me take a minute to shout out a few others. I’ve recently been talking to @gemma_barker, and I love this video of her solving a clear “impossible” puzzle.

And one of my favorite puzzletok-ers (who I recently got to meet in person last December!) is @bourtneytherobot. She had some videos about Simone Geirtz’s white puzzle go viral, and has also done Lazels puzzles and the 3000 piece Karen Puzzles Puzzle.

Gradient Cascade

Remember that my new puzzle Gradient Cascade is now available from Barnes & Noble (online and in stores). Here is the link again to get it. 

And remember that the Mother’s Day code I shared for a custom puzzle from PuzzleYou is still valid through the end of the month. You may have missed the window for Mother’s Day, but maybe you know someone with a birthday or graduation coming up who would love a custom puzzle. All of the info is in the description of this video.

Thank you again for signing up for my newsletter, and I’ll see you all next week!

-Karen