There’s nothing quite like finishing a puzzle. The sense of accomplishment when you fit that final piece is invigorating. It makes you want to do bigger and more complex puzzles.
But you don’t always get to share that joy with someone else. Let’s face it, your friends are tired of coming over to look at your puzzles every month and your Facebook timeline can’t handle anymore pictures.
So what’s a puzzle enthusiast to do to get that feeling back? Go to the Concord Public Library.
There’s a table to the right as you walk in the main doors, and there you’ll see a puzzle. Anyone can work on it for as long or as little as they’d like. In a rush? Put in a piece or two. Need to kill some time? Pull up a chair and tackle one of the harder parts.
“There are a couple of people I see at the table all the time putting 15 to 20 pieces in,” said Joann Salemy, an administrative specialist at the library. “So we don’t know who did what, if there were 50 people who contributed or just the two people we see almost every day.”
It all started back in late May at the library’s How To Festival. That’s where the staff put out a 252-piece puzzle of the front of the library that was finished that same day. They got such great feedback, they decided to put out another one – this time a 616-piecer of Fenway Park during the Red Sox 2004 championship run. Oh, the memories.
And the fun hasn’t stopped. As of last week, there were only a dozen or so pieces remaining of a picturesque scene, so odds are that one has been finished. That brings the total of puzzles completed on the main floor to five (there’s also a station in the children’s room), that also includes one made up of flags and a motorcycle. The last three have all been 1,000 pieces.
“It’s another thing for people to do,” Salemy said. “It was just an idea we had when we were thinking of a community project for the How To Festival.”
Someone recently donated a few puzzles to the library, so there are some options as to what will be put out next.
But you’ll have to stop in to the library to find out what it is. And don’t forget to add a piece or two – this is a community project after all.
