The Power of Puzzles
There’s something meditative about doing a jigsaw puzzle, rummaging through piece after piece, the mind gradually emptying. And it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of time and still find yourself in your pyjamas past midday…
Fret not, if this has happened to you; whether alone or with others, puzzling has a number of benefits.
For the brain:
Jigsaw puzzles exercise both the left and right sides of your brain at the same time, meaning you use logic and creativity together and keep your grey matter whirring away happily.
They also help improve your short term memory, especially important for those of us who get to the top of the stairs only to forget what we’d gone up for.
And they improve visual-spatial reasoning, which is useful for ascertaining distances as well as problem solving.
And jigsaws are also great for general wellbeing, with things like:
Mindfulness, the ability to be fully present and not overwhelmed by everything around us.
Stress reduction: by giving yourself up to the puzzle before you, everything else fades into obscurity.
And finally, switching off from tech, specifically that habit of checking our phones every other second.
But what if there was another benefit, the icing on the cake?
Well there is and that is to discover more about wine as you puzzle.
We have a selection of jigsaw puzzles from the fantastic sommeliers at Water & Wines. A Swedish company, it was founded in lockdown 2020 by Yamit who, having recently completed a sommelier course, was making puzzles as a meditative activity. This then flourished as she was joined by friend and avid puzzler, Mathilde, and is now a full blown wine puzzle factory with 8 different versions at time of press. These are maps of wine countries - France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, California, South Africa - and one whisky country, Scotland. Plus, it looks as though they are going to continue their prolific production with Australia on the way and Champagne in the works.
Premium jigsaws, designed by hand and made in Europe, each one is visually striking and draws you into the colourful world of wine - in Water & Wines own words “Play your way into the World of Wine!” Moreover, if you’re a student taking a WSET or sommelier course, they’re a valuable tool for fixing places in mind and considerably more interactive than staring at a map.
The humble jigsaw puzzle has a lot going for it so why not get those corner pieces in place and puzzle away.
