Jigsaw Puzzle - Awesome. Simply awesome.

I've played a few jigsaw puzzles online before, and none of them ever thrilled me. I always had a hard time with separating pieces and getting everything together!

But now I've found the holy grail of online jigsaw puzzles: Jigsaw Puzzle at Spigo!!

Despite the uncreative name, Jigsaw Puzzle is flat out amazing. It's a brand new Spigo game and they released it with a total of 405 pictures in nine different categories!

Wow!!

Once you pick your picture you decide whether you want to do an easy (49 pieces), medium (100 pieces), or hard puzzle (144 pieces.) For an extra challenge you can select rotation, which means you have to turn the pieces to make them fit!

Jigsaw Puzzle also keeps track of the puzzles you've finished! It's color coordinated to the difficulty levels so you can see which levels you've completed.

Pfft! That's two easy!

Whenever you finish a puzzle you'll get a jackpot spin. It's a progressive pot with a cash prize of up to $200! Most likely you'll just get Spigos, which are good too. ^_^ Harder puzzles pay more Spigos!

I won!!

Special Features

There are a LOT of special tools in Jigsaw Puzzle. You don't have to use any of them, but you should at least know what they do. ^_^ We'll start with the buttons at the top.

Oooooooooohhhh!

The green button means "grab." When you click it you'll be able to grab several pieces at once and move them across the board. It looks like this!

Alien abduction!!! RUN!!!

The orange button shakes the entire board and separates some of the pieces. I haven't needed this, but it's there if you want it. ^_^

Once you have a few pieces attached to a corner piece, hit the brownish button to "lock" the group onto the board. All unmatched pieces will automatically show up on top of the locked sections. Very useful!

The blue button is an amazing tool. It has three options.

1. Highlight corner pieces
2. Highlight edge pieces (includes corner pieces)
3. Highlight pieces that connect to a selected piece

Highlighted pieces show up with a blue border around the edges. In the picture below I have just corner pieces highlighted.

I spy two corners!

In the next shot I have edge pieces highlighted.

Man, this is really useful!

And in this last shot I have one piece selected. It shows up with a neon green border around it. Any connecting pieces show up in blue.

I wish my puzzles at home did this.

Isn't that awesome? ^_^

If you have rotation added, the next button on the toolbar is a red arrow. Click it to flip pieces around! (Right clicking your mouse button will do the same thing. I think that's easier.)

The next button is the puzzle box. This is where the rest of the pieces are stored. Click to open!

What do I do now?

You cannot put pieces together inside the box. Click the red arrow to add pieces to the box and clear some room on your board, or click the green arrow to pull pieces out of the box.

And yes, you can combine the highlighting feature with the box to pull out specific pieces without even opening the box up. ^_^ I'll explain this in the Easy Puzzling section.

If you need a refresher of what your picture looks like, click the "scenic" button on the top right. (It's the last one on the toolbar.)

Ta-da!

And lastly in the group of super-cool-tools is a button on the side, right next to the chat window. Click it and it will expand to this:

Voila!

Here you can change the background color of your puzzle board. If you have a dark puzzle, you'll probably spot the pieces easier with a white background. Avoid the blue background for ocean or sky puzzles. ^_^


Gold Member Benefits

Gold members can upload their own pictures to turn into a puzzle! They also can submit a picture to Spigo for public use. If accepted, it's added to the massive collection that everyone can use!


Achievements

Jigsaw Puzzle features four challenges that you can complete for badges and Spigos! You can earn each badge (and the reward) one time only.

• Approved - Submit and get a picture approved for 10,000 Spigos
• The patient puzzle solver - Solve 5 different puzzles from each of the original categories for 25,000 Spigos. (That's a total of 45 puzzles.)
• It's time for a puzzle game - Solve 50 different puzzle games, each under 5 minutes for 50,000 Spigos.
• Round about - Put together 100 distinct puzzles in hard mode with the rotation feature for 200,000 Spigos!!

To be honest, I'm peeved about the first badge. Since only Gold members can submit pictures, that means free players can never win that badge. I hope that this isn't going to become a recurring trend.

The other achievements are awesome. They'll take a while to earn and I LOVE a good challenge! ^_^


Easy Puzzling

Clearly, Jigsaw Puzzle has many tools that other online puzzles don't have. You can choose to use as many or as few as you like! But if you want to finish puzzles quickly and easily, here is what I do. (Note: This is without rotation. It will still work just fine with rotation on, but it will take you a little longer. ^_^)

I start by clicking the red arrow under the box for spare pieces.

That one.

I click it until ALL of the pieces are in the box and my board is clear. Then I select "corners" with the highlight button. When I hit the green arrow button in the box of pieces, all four corners come out. Nothing else!

Handy!

Next I move the pieces to their respective corners. Then I change the highlight tool to "edge pieces" and hit the green arrow again. Now I have all of the edge pieces!

Huzzah!

Change the highlight option to "specific pieces." Click on any piece and the connecting pieces are highlighted. Finishing the frame is easy-peasy!

Wow! It changed colors!

It doesn't really change colors. *^_^* For some odd reason I took screenshots of multiple puzzles.

Anywho! Click the green arrow to start taking pieces out of the box. If the piece connects to the frame then the entire frame will be outlined in blue. No blue? No direct connection. I suggest that you don't change the highlighting feature unless you feel it's too easy.

Pretty picture!

And that's it! I've completed puzzles with and without rotation on, and I think I like the extra challenge. It's definitely slower, but it's more like an actual puzzle. Play around and figure out what you like!


Nitpicky Things

Sorting through the categories needs to be easier. By default you start in the "Architectural" category and you have to wait for all of the thumbnails to load before you can scoot to the next one. Then you have to wait for the thumbnails to load for that category, and so on.

I'm on broadband and it's still slow! Jigsaw Puzzle should start with a list of the categories and then once you pick the thumbnails load for that category alone.

Secondly, taking pieces out of the box isn't consistent. Sometimes I'll get one piece over and over, then BOOM! Next click hands me 20 pieces. That's frustrating.


Final Rating

Nitpicky things aside, Jigsaw Puzzle at Spigo is the best jigsaw puzzle game that I've seen online. It's amazing. Hundreds of pictures, dozens of ways to play, it has it all! I rate this a 5 out of 5 stars.

If you go play, check out the nature and animals categories. Those are my fave. ^_^ Which categories do you like? (The food one makes me hungry.)


Similar Games

I don't have any other jigsaw games to recommend, but here are a few games that make you think about how things fit together. ^_^

• Sudoku Puzzle Blast at Pogo - This is a fascinating mash of jigsaw puzzles and Sudoku. You should try it!
• Rotato at Candystand - Rotate the board to make pieces fall together. Puzzle #43 is brutal. 
• Picture Magic at Winster - "Spin" the wheel to gather puzzle pieces. Work with your team to complete puzzles faster!