I have a friend who’s almost as crazy as I am– and that’s saying something. His name’s Dave Beffa-Negrini. He creates custom, hand-cut wooden jigsaw puzzles. You can check out his work at Fool’s Gold Puzzles. If you’re only familiar with store-bought cardboard puzzles (as I was), you’ll be amazed.
Dave loves games and puzzles of all kinds. Not long ago, he discovered an app called Draw Something.
Basic idea: It’s a 2-person game. You’re given a word, you draw a picture on your iPad using a stylus, you transmit the picture to the other player who tries to guess the word based on your picture.
The app records every line you draw, every erasure. The other person watches your drawing materialize line by line, and can jump in at any point with a guess. He also gets two hints: the number of letters in the word, and a jumbled set of letters which contains
all the letters needed to spell the word.
For example: here’s Dave’s drawing for BARSTOOL. The other person would know it’s an 8-letter word, and he might get a set of letters like this: RKOAESBTDLO, which includes all the letters he needs to spell BARSTOOL, along with a few decoy letters.
Now most people would draw something simple: in this case, maybe a a stool and a cocktail glass on a one-line countertop. Not Dave. He’ll do something elaborate and add extra elements to make it more challenging. He’ll also try to make you laugh. He’d make
a great cartoonist.
Ready to try a few of Dave’s puzzlers? OK, here we go. Answers at end of post.
_ _ _ (3 letters) LGBOISRPA
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (8 letters) UNREETICHAD
_ _ _ (3 letters) SHOAIFCPU
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ (7 letters) LTADESRUNPE
_ _ _ _ (4 letters) SACMZIJGZM
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ (7 letters) KCONIOPCEGH
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ (7 letters) THIAPSAEEDR
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ (7 letters) REKTULNMIBP
Answers:
PIG
AUDIENCE
UFO
ANTLERS
JAZZ
CHICKEN
HEADSET
PLUMBER
He snuck in some funny gags. My favorites were: the missile firing out of the silo, the
little green Martian in the spaceship, the stork flying past the plane with the baby, and
of course the plumber’s butt crack.
There’s also a subtle touch in the JAZZ drawing that deserves a mention: two of the faces aren’t singing; they don’t have open mouths because they’re playing wind instruments (sax and trombone). They other face is singing; that’s because he’s playing a stand-up bass, which only requires the use of his hands.
My thanks to Dave for sharing these with us. And if you’re curious about the amazing forms a hand-cut jigsaw puzzle can take, check out his work at Fool’s Gold Puzzles.
What do you think? Do you enjoy puzzles? crosswords? board games? Ever put a big jigsaw puzzle together, then gnashed your teeth because there was a piece missing? Hope you’ll leave a comment.
