In celebration of National Jigsaw puzzle day (Jan. 27), the Nordmeyers, owners of Puzzles Plus at The Greene in Beavercreek, began work on a 32,000 piece puzzle.
The puzzle, made by the puzzle and toy company Ravensburger, features a view of Manhattan from the 61st floor of Rockefeller Center. When finished the completed puzzle will be 18 feet wide and 6½ feet tall.
Steve said that this puzzle used to hold the world record for largest puzzle, but it has recently been outdone by another puzzle by the same company, a 40,000 piece work that is a collection of 10 Disney cartoon images.
The view of Manhattan puzzle is divided into eight bags that map to a different section of the overall puzzle. “This makes the task of completing it, while still daunting, more manageable. Instead of 32,000 pieces scattered about, we get to attack a 4,000 piece puzzle eight times in a row,” said Steve.
Steve says that they plan to hold morning sessions with coffee and donuts at 9 a.m. on the first Saturday of each month to help move the project along. He said he would be thrilled if the project were completed by October but says that might be a bit ambitious.
When completed, the puzzle will hang along the back wall of their store at The Greene, giving the illusion from the street that the back of the store has a window overlooking a huge city.
Steve works as the principle software engineer for DRS Technologies. Lisa doespersonal care aid for Graceworks at Home.
They purchased the 22-year old Beavercreek business Puzzles Plus last February. The original location is at 1273 N. Fairfield Road, Beavercreek. They opened its second location in The Greene in July.
Outside of their business the Nordmeyers are actively involved in sharing their love of a solving puzzles of all kinds within their own family and the community. Steve said after watching the movie “National Treasure” he decided to create two large-scale, multi-day scavenger hunts called Nordmeyer Treasure for his daughters.
“It challenged them at all levels and was so much fun to put together that I documented their progress online for our friends and family to follow,” said Steve.
The idea eventually morphed into an “Amazing Race” TV show-style challenge that Steve developed as a team-building exercise for the Ankeney Middle School Show Choir.
“The choir would break into teams to solve clues that would take them to a series of locations such as businesses, parks and public buildings, where they would have to perform some task in order to get the clue to the next location. The whole family helps organize and plan these events.”
In addition to this the Nordmeyers also run local trivia evenings for the Ankeney Art Department and eighth-grade classes. Steve said, “Beef O’Brady’s works with us to let us run the event at their restaurant, and they donate a percentage of the sales that day to the groups, as well. We run several rounds of multimedia trivia for a few hours, giving away a cash grand prize and many door prizes donated by local businesses.”
As far as future jigsaw puzzle ambitions go, the Nordmeyers said that although they don’t to do a puzzle on this scale every year, they will have events for the public to participate in throughout the year including a puzzle building contest and game nights where they will showcase some of the games they sell and events involving trivia contests.
Contact this contributing writer at EricaHarrah@woh.rr.com.
Learn more
Online: You can find Puzzles Plus online at www.puzzlesplus.net/ and also on Facebook.
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