What Size Puzzle Should You Buy? A Comparison for Preschoolers, Kids, and Adults

The pleasure of putting together a puzzle lies in the slow, quiet process of putting together each piece of the puzzle, which gives us the pleasurable satisfaction of emptying our minds and relaxing our bodies in the process, find your own peace.

But the only way to feel relaxed is if the puzzle is just right. Too simple a puzzle can be boring and end up boring before you’ve even settled down. Too complex a puzzle can make you irritable and anxious, it’s hard to make it to the end.

People of different ages have different degrees of adaptation to the difficulty level of the puzzle. To make the puzzle experience both satisfying and comfortable, the choice of the number of pieces is particularly important.

This article will show you how many pieces of a puzzle to start with for players of different ages.

Pre-school children (3-5)

Pre-school children are learning hand-eye coordination, cognition and observation. It’s hard for child that age to concentrate on one thing for a long time. The toys they choose need to be guided. Therefore, for this stage of the child to choose the puzzle needs to choose simple, bright, clear shape of the big puzzle.

Children (6–10)

Children at 6 to 10 age already have strong logical abilities, they have their own preferences and ideas, and can put their cognitive and observational skills into practice. At this stage, they can accept puzzles with more complex patterns and more pieces.

Of course, the recommendations in this article are only for children who have few experience at jigsaw puzzles. If your child already loves and is good at puzzle games, you can also choose puzzles with 500 or even 1000 pieces, they will like it.

Adult Puzzles

For adults, Puzzle playing is all about interest. If you’re new to puzzles, we will recommend you to start with 300 pieces. If you’re interested, start with 500 pieces, try 1,000 or even 2,000 as you become more proficient.

Besides the number of pieces, the pattern of the puzzle also has a big impact on difficulty level:

• Easy Level:
  • Patterns with clear color block divisions, such as landscape maps, cartoon illustrations, etc
  • A large image composed of multiple small images
• Medium Level:
  • Patterns with clear color block divisions but some areas that are repetitive, such as landscapes or illustrations with large areas of sky and grass
• Hard Level:
  • solid color pattern
  • Highly repetitive patterns
  • Dense patterns with dots, lines, and text

We would like to recommend some high-quality jigsaw puzzles based on the number of pieces and patterns to you. You can reference the completion time to choose the right puzzles.

The number of pieces you choose can be very important depending on your puzzle’s purpose. You can refer to this article and choose the puzzle we recommend based on your needs.