SLO resident spent 2 months putting together a 60,000-piece puzzle: ‘It took over my life’
One San Luis Obispo County woman recently embarked on an adventure from her kitchen table.
Her goal? To assemble a 60,000 piece puzzle.
Retired physician Minke WinklerPrins started the puzzle in early November.
On Thursday, she threw a party as she snapped together the final pieces.
“It’s extraordinary,” WinklerPrins said. “I’m still walking around in this dopamine fog from doing it. It’s incredibly peaceful. It’s also kind of crazy because it took over my life for two months.”
Designed by puzzle company Dowdle, “What a Wonderful World” measures 8 feet long and 29 feet wide when finished and forms a map of the world.
Costco is selling the puzzle for $470.
Although Dowdle is advertising “What a Wonderful World” as the “world’s largest puzzle, it’s not the biggest on the planet in terms of size or number of pieces,” according to Guinness World Records.
In 2011, students at the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, completed a 551,232-piece puzzle, the Guinness World Records website said.
The world’s largest puzzle in terms of size was 65,905.17 square feet, and assembled in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2018, according to the site.
WinklerPrins described the process of putting together “What a Wonderful World” as time-consuming but fun and relaxing.
“I am a fanatic,” WinklerPrins said. “I have done puzzles all my life and find it deeply calming. Doing a puzzle day after day after day has been like a an eight-week silent meditation.”
How long did it take to finish ‘world’s largest puzzle’?
WinklerPrins ordered the puzzle from Costco on Nov. 1.
On Nov. 4, the puzzle arrived at her doorstep in a 100-pound box containing 60 puzzles of 1,000 pieces each.
Each of the 60 puzzles measures 19 by 29 inches when finished, she explained. They snap together to form “What a Wonderful World.”
“By that evening, I had finished the first puzzle and decided I was going to do the whole thing,” WinklerPrins said.
WinklerPrins assembled 52 of the smaller puzzles. Her friend Julia Meyer assembled five puzzles, and three other friends completed one puzzle each, she said.
WinklerPins put together most of the puzzles at her kitchen table. Each time she finished a puzzle, she stored it in a stack separated by poster board sheets in her living room.
“It wasn’t unusual for me to stay up till 1 or 2 a.m., or then to wake up at 5 a.m. and just go downstairs and start my day sitting at the puzzle for a couple of hours,” she said. “It was this friend that was always waiting for me.”
WinklerPrins built an average of one puzzle per day, and each puzzle took about eight hours to complete, she said.
She once assembled a puzzle in five and a half hours, she said, adding that the most difficult puzzle took about 12 or 13 hours to finish.
“It’s just me doing what I love,” WinklerPins said. “It was a space of timelessness. I can blink and three hours will have passed.”
WinklerPrins also took the puzzle process on the road.
She brought her puzzles on a road trip to Eureka, where she finished three puzzles.
Then she flew to Austin, Texas, to visit her sister. There, she completed another two puzzles.
WinklerPrins transported the assembled puzzles back to San Luis Obispo in her carry-on luggage, she said.
“I had taken each completed puzzle and broke it into four pieces, and then stacked each of them on a piece of paper — like a layer cake with them between two boards,” she said.
The Transportation Security Administration stopped her to examine the puzzles, WinklerPrins said.
“They’d never quite seen anything like this before, so that ended up being comical,” she said.
WinklerPrins lost five puzzle pieces during the process, she said.
In Texas, her sister’s dog ate four pieces, and an friend lost one of the puzzle pieces, she said.
“He lives with two cats and a dog, so those are probably the guilty party,” WinklerPrins said.
Is SLO woman first to finish 60,000-piece puzzle?
WinklerPrins finished the 60th smaller puzzle on Dec. 26 at about 11 p.m., she said.
She and and 10 friends gathered together Thursday to drink champagne and complete “What a Wonderful World” by putting the smaller puzzles together.
“It felt mostly sad because I would love be doing more,” WinklerPrins said. “But it also feels good to have my life back. Since Monday, I’ve been just doing 100 little things that got put to the wayside over the last two months.”
WinklerPrins and her friends may be the first to have completed Dowdle’s 60,000-piece puzzle.
A few weeks ago, she called Dowdle and an employee told her that they didn’t know of anyone who had finished the puzzle, she said.
Dowdle’s office was closed for the holidays and had not responded to The Tribune’s requests for comment as of Sunday.
No one has claimed to have finished the puzzle online, either.
According to NPR, a group in Boston attempted to put together the 60,000-piece puzzle in November without success.
“I almost feel a little sheepish about it,” WinklerPrins said. “It doesn’t end world hunger. It doesn’t fix problems outside my door, but I am so calm and peaceful right now. I’m 65, and I’ve never had this degree of calm.”
This story was originally published January 1, 2023 at 10:11 AM.
