In 2022, Becca Taylor, an associate director at Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute, went to a speed jigsaw puzzle competition in Half Moon Bay on a whim and surprised herself by winning.

There, she met Susanne Riehemann, who earned her PhD in linguistics at Stanford and was actively looking for competition teammates. Riehemann sent Taylor home with some puzzles and asked her to share her completion times. Taylor excitedly finished one that evening, and upon receipt of her time, Riehemann enthusiastically shared her approval.

Since then, the pieces of Taylor’s competitive puzzling career have fallen into place, taking her all the way to the fourth annual World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship in Valladolid, Spain, in September. Her team, the Busy Birdies, won the world championship by completing two 1,000-piece puzzles back-to-back in an hour and 16 minutes.

Becca Taylor (second from left) poses for a photo with Doug Ellwanger, Susanne Riehemann, and Linnea Shieh at a wooden puzzle race at a Half Moon Bay wine bar. | Vera Cresson

“Becca’s become a great part of the community,” Riehemann said. “She’s faster than me now and definitely on a meteoric rise.”

In developing her passion for puzzling, Taylor has made many new friends, redefined her self-identity, and found ways to give back to others.

“It’s been really interesting to discover that in adulthood you can still learn something, particularly something you associate with childhood and being a kid’s activity,” Taylor said. “I’ve never been an athlete, and it’s motivating to discover you have a natural talent or proclivity for a very niche activity late in life.”

Feeling pieceful

Speed puzzling burgeoned online during the pandemic with live streaming of competitions and puzzle influencers on social media. In recent years, the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association (JPA), which is a nonprofit, and SpeedPuzzling.com, which is for-profit, emerged as the two main leagues in the U.S.

Taylor is an officer/board member of the JPA, which sanctions some SpeedPuzzling.com events and counts them toward competitors’ rankings.

Riehemann herself started competitive puzzling during the pandemic. “I really enjoy the teams of four because, in addition to puzzling yourself, you have the challenge of working with others,” Riehemann said. “It can get pretty wild and crazy, especially towards the end when you have eight hands all reaching for a few pieces.”

Riehemann taught Taylor the ropes of speed puzzling. Unlike her first competition at the wine bar, food and drinks are a no-no. Competitors don’t get to see the puzzle image ahead of time so they must strategize quickly once the competition begins. To start, most people immediately dump out all the pieces and turn them over. From there, competitors’ styles vary.

Becca Taylor competes with Hannah Scott during the 2023 Pairs Semifinals during the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship. | Yvonne Feucht

Some work on one item first, like a red car, which Taylor refers to as “noise reduction,” while others group pieces into categories according to color or shape. Taylor always starts with dark colors and ends with pinks, “because I hate them,” she said.

Generally, it’s best to do the edges first to eliminate a sizable percentage of the pieces and give clues for other pieces’ placement, Taylor explained. Yet if the puzzle is round, you usually work from the middle, using the piece’s shapes for guidance since interior pieces have a sharper curve.

If competing as a team, competitors learn their teammate’s strengths to help divide and conquer. Taylor’s team names have included “The Piece Corps” and “Jigonometry.”

While some people excel at discerning small details or differences of shades on pieces, Taylor’s strength lies in recognizing piece shapes, such as “2x2s” and “castles.” As such, she’s typically the one who will work the puzzle upside down in team competitions.

“The fastest I go is when there’s no image, like if it’s a huge section of sky or a tree of all leaves, because I can completely ignore the picture and just focus on the shape of the pieces,” Taylor explained.

For Becca Taylor, working on a puzzle is a calming, satisfying exercise. | Andrew Brodhead

Inner piece

Taylor completed her first puzzle when she was around 5 years old and had chickenpox. To distract her from scratching, her parents bought her a 5,000-piece puzzle depicting a lion and a cheetah, which she obsessively completed within about a week. “Looking back, I don’t know how I did that,” she said. “Puzzlers joke that animal fur is like our kryptonite. It’s very hard to do that fast.”

After a head injury years ago, Taylor said puzzles also helped her recover.

“It is devoid of language and entirely visual, so it’s pulling out a different primal area of your brain,” she explained. “I get a tingly feeling in my head when doing a puzzle. It calms me down, it’s satisfying, and it makes me feel like I’m investing in my own brain.”

As an adult, she regularly bought puzzles that she would work on bit by bit. However, since she began competing, it’s hard not to finish one all at once, even if it takes eight hours.

“I used to have a lot more self-restraint,” Taylor said, laughing. “It was my decompression after work, which I still do.”

Fitting together

Taylor hosts puzzle swaps throughout the year and also does “puzzle drops” on campus from time to time, especially during final seasons when she hopes they can be a source of respite for others. Taylor will sometimes include a QR code on the box so people can track where it goes; some of her puzzles have turned up in Australia and Europe.

Competing has also introduced Taylor to new friends and colleagues across campus as she discovered puzzlers in Stanford’s midst.

“Puzzle people are, for the most part, warm and funny,” she said. “I’ve been able to engage with such a wide variety of people over this quirky little thing so it’s had a really positive social impact for me.”

She also helps recruit other puzzlers now. Linnea Shieh, head librarian of the Terman Engineering Library, recently started speed puzzling after her husband signed her up for the state competition. Shieh did well, placing 10th, and Riehemann immediately reached out to her to invite her to compete with her at the USA Jigsaw Nationals where they took fifth place. Since then, Shieh has also competed with Taylor and found that the experience has rekindled her love of puzzles.

Shieh normally prefers really hard puzzles, such as an 18,000-piece one she completed during the pandemic, and said competition forces her to try puzzles that she normally wouldn’t pick.

“I keep saying I’m going to get out but they drag me back into it. The pair and team events are really fun,” Shieh said. “The competitions are totally ridiculous – you have 100 people in a room and it’s ‘3, 2, 1, go!’ Everyone’s dumping out their puzzles and pieces flying everywhere. It’s a frenetic activity and it never strikes me as not bizarre to be doing puzzles.”

This story has been updated to include details from Taylor’s team performance at the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship.