Twenty pairs of the North Shore’s best jigsaw puzzlers took part in the inaugural Marblehead Festival of Arts Speed Puzzling Competition at Abbot Hall Saturday morning.
The competition, held as a fundraiser for the Festival, was the first of its kind in Marblehead.
“I’ve always loved puzzling and I’ve seen speed puzzling start to get more and more popular across the country, but Marblehead still didn’t have a competition,” said Meghan Perlow, festival vice president and lead organizer of Saturday’s event. “I’ve already had some contestants come from Salem and Swampscott who are excited to start running competitions over in their towns.”
The rules of speed puzzling are simple: Finish a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle as quickly as possible or, if no team finishes within the two-hour time limit, have the fewest pieces remaining. While every team works on the same puzzle, competitors have no prior knowledge of the image until the race begins.
At 10 a.m. sharp, competitors removed the black bags covering their puzzles, revealing a vibrant image designed to challenge the best jigsaw puzzlers in the country at the 2025 USA Jigsaw Nationals.
While everyone started on equal footing, the top teams began to separate themselves by the 20-minute mark. The Marblehead duo of Suzie Keenholtz and Sarah Hartline and the team of Masha Stine of Peabody and Brittany Uminski of Beverly emerged as early favorites as the clock ticked.
By 10:45 a.m., attention in the gallery and on the competition floor turned to Stine and Uminski, members of a puzzling team known as “The Edgers,” as the final image came into focus.
A cheer erupted from the auditorium as spectators and competitors alike celebrated when Uminski pressed the 500th and final piece into place, securing the inaugural Marblehead jigsaw puzzle championship with a time of 53 minutes, 40 seconds.
(For comparison, the winning pair at the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Nationals in April finished in 32 minutes, 19 seconds.)
“For Marblehead’s first speed puzzle competition, I’m floored that they picked this puzzle,” said Stine. “It’s a really hard puzzle. If there’s a two-hour limit, there will definitely be people here longer than two hours. I’m surprised they picked such a hard puzzle.”
Stine and Uminski both share a longtime love of jigsaw puzzles and drew on their competitive puzzling experience during Saturday’s event.
“I got (Uminski) into it,” said Stine. “I’ve just been doing puzzles my whole life. I grew up as an only child so what I would do was switch out between doing puzzles and playing video games. I was just always by myself doing some activity and puzzling was one of them.”
Along with bragging rights, the pair took home a prize pack provided by Mud Puddle Toys, which included two 1,000-piece puzzles and a set of sorting containers.
Keenholtz and Hartline finished second with a time of 1 hour, 3 minutes. It marked the team’s second runner-up finish in the two puzzle derbies they have entered.
“(Keenholtz) sent me the link and I thought she was making a joke,” said Hartline. “Then we just said, ‘We’ll try it!’”
Meaghan Amato and Portia Brown of Swampscott rounded out the podium, completing the puzzle in 1 hour, 17 minutes.
With the success of Marblehead’s first speed puzzling competition, plans for similar events across the North Shore are already in the works.
“I think we’re definitely on the hook now for multiple puzzle competitions in town,” said Perlow. “Like I said, we’ve got competitors here from Salem, Lynn and Swampscott. We’re all connecting and starting to get more puzzle competitions going.”
