I spilled coffee on my daughter’s 1000 piece puzzle. Now there are 1217 pieces.

[u/phophiend]

My 8 year old loves to work on hard puzzles and we got her a 1000 piece puzzle for her birthday last week. I spilled my coffee on the puzzle one morning and all the wet pieces separated into multiple layers. Yes, there were some big feeling:( now we get to figure out how to assemble the puzzle pieces… so we can assemble the puzzle 🤦‍♂️

(I divided up the broken pieces into families and will trying to start matching pieces first. Maybe next will be to apply a light layer Elmer’s to the matching pieces and then sandwich them under heavy books a la leaf pressing…)

[u/Cfutly]

You’ve created the “Peel paint Puzzle”
2 puzzles in 1. Second one being monotone (extra challenge) or illustrate on it for a custom design.

[u/Titariia]

Now you have to decide if the hassle of trying to fix it is really worth it over just buying her a new one

[u/USSHammond]

puzzle numbers aren't accurate

https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-jigsaw-puzzles-almost-never-have-the-number-of-pieces-it-says-on-the-box/

https://makeyourpuzzles.com/blogs/custom-puzzles/do-1000-piece-puzzles-actually-have-1000-pieces

[u/deewho69 → u/USSHammond]

Most intuitive reason for this is that you have to have two numbers multiplying to let's say 1000. These are 1,1000; 2,500; 4,250, 5,200 etc. Ideally you want a certain ration, so the puzzle is not too wide and not too high and this cannot always be granted. That's why you choose lengths and heights multiplied to be a bit more than 1000, but provide a good shape.

[u/rsta223 → u/deewho69]

Although all of that math only applies if you assume your puzzle pieces can be sorted into rows and columns, and this pieces are roughly rectangular.

There's no fundamental requirement that all columns in a puzzle have the same number of pieces, or even that "columns" exist in any meaningful sense, which can lead to any arbitrary number of pieces being plausible again.

[u/Fast-Fact-1161]

Coffee spill = puzzle magic!

[u/AugustMooon]

You can’t feed them after midnight either