DES MOINES, Iowa — If there’s a silver lining to this new normal we are all living in during the pandemic it’s the extra time to spend with family, outdoors, or picking up a long lost hobby. One hobby a lot of people are doing right now is puzzling.
“It’s been a puzzle frenzy. It’s pretty crazy. No one could have predicted this,” Colin Wroblewski with White Mountain Puzzles said.
White Mountain Puzzles, one of the top puzzle brands in the United States, said people are becoming jigsaw junkies. Right now sales are 10 times more than they were last year. They have a lot of puzzles out of stock and the ones in stock can take up to two weeks to ship because of the sheer amount of orders they are receiving right now.
With puzzle sales soaring, two local companies decided to get in on the action. Bozz Prints and The Rook Room, which is a pop-up board game experience for the Des Moines Metro, are teaming up to create puzzles.
“We’ve seen that interest everywhere. I mean, Bozz Prints posted about it and that blew up online. So we’re just really excited,” Annelise Tarnowski, owner of The Rook Room said. “We’re excited to be able to bring puzzles to people because they want them and it’s hard to get them. We can’t give them games right now and we can’t bring them together right now, so if we can give them this custom puzzle that also supports two local businesses. I mean, it’s perfect.”
They are using six of Bozz Prints’ designs for custom, unique puzzles. The Rook Room hopes to have them ready to purchase by the beginning of May, in the next 1-2 weeks.
“There’s a lot of people stuck at home, a lot of families looking for ways to entertain their kids and themselves, and I think puzzles are just a great mental exercise as much as they are a fun activity. So I think they kind of blend the best of both worlds when it comes to something to do,” John Bosley, the creative director for Bozz Prints said.
This was a collaboration the Rook Room and Bozz Prints were hoping to make happen for some time but decided to pull the trigger right now due to demand. Tarnowski said they were already seeing the growing interest in puzzles over the last year. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, The Rook Room would hold competitive puzzle events where teams would work on the same puzzle to see who could complete it the fastest.
“They’ve gotten super popular. I think it’s the accessibility. They’re pretty cheap. It’s pretty easy to understand how they work. You can get better at it, so I think people after they finish one they’re like ‘okay, now I was pretty good maybe I’ll do a harder one.’ So there’s kind of a progression that you can do,” Tarnowski said.
Once ready, Bozz Prints will have information about how to order their puzzles on their website. Bosley said they already have a lot of requests for the puzzles.