[This Not A Blog™ entry was originally published on December 12, 2004. It has been edited for composition as well as spelling and grammar.]

I have a puzzle. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember but it was only recently that I decided I should try and put it together. There is something about puzzles that they demand your time and effort. They insist on being solved, and who am I to say no? This particular puzzle was no different.

It was one of the most difficult puzzles I have ever attempted. The pieces were tiny and they did not all fall in a standard grid. All the puzzles I’ve done in the past are neatly arranged: each piece is four sided, connecting to one other piece per side. This one was much harder. I still can’t tell whether it was designed with nothing but a random pattern or if there is, in fact, an underlying geometry.

But the worst part was that it didn’t come with a picture. The front of the box is supposed to be a representation of what the final puzzle looks like. This box had nothing of the sort, saying only Puzzle across the front in an ornate, old-fashioned typeface, and surrounded by patterns reminiscent of art nouveau. It did not take long for me to determine that this was not the image.

Like any jigsaw connoisseur, I started with the border. I made two piles: the edge pieces—or likely edge pieces as I could not be sure—and obvious interior pieces. The corners were even difficult to find, and it was not until about half way through that I realized the upper-right corner was indeed no corner at all, but a peculiar interior piece with a neat right angle.

I cannot honestly say I worked on it tirelessly. As a matter of fact, I got tired of it almost immediately. What a thoroughly pointless effort. Attempting to solve a puzzle which was fiendishly difficult and with no discernible image. I left it sit on more than one occasion, but the patient insistence on completion the half-solved puzzle projected to me drove me on.

When I finished I realized that there was no image—at least, nothing that would have been helpfully reproduced on the box. It was an abstract pattern, complex at some points, minimalist at others. I don’t get it. Still, it was something of an accomplishment to have actually finished the thing. Admiring it, I marveled how each piece fit so perfectly with all the others. Everything intermeshed to produce an interesting, if not esoteric whole. I left it on the coffee table for guests to admire.

The box, I decided, I would prominently display on the bookcase, as proof that the puzzle was once contained therein and that I did not simply transport it to my home whole, the result of some other poor soul’s labors. I picked up the box. Unexpectedly, a single additional cardboard shape rattled out and fell to the table. Another piece? Surely this must be some oversight on the part of the manufacturer. It was obvious; I had a completed puzzle on my table already. Possibly it belonged to another puzzle. Although these were comforting possibilities, I knew they were not true. This piece—because of its unique shape, because of its size, and most of all because of where I found it—went with the puzzle I had just finished.

Over the next few weeks I double-checked every piece I had already laid in place, looking for duplicates. I had to conclude that there were none. I looked for holes—any sort of gap which would indicated a section was not as aligned as I thought it might be. There were none. I examined the image through a loupe for disparities among the intricate patterns. There were none.

There was only one course of action for me to take. I took the errant piece down to the cellar. I thought of leaving it on the workbench there; the table full of half-finished projects and long forgotten constructs. But that was much too apparent. Even in the dim glow of the bare incandescent bulb, its location would be immediately perceived by anyone who happened to descend the cellar steps. No, there was only one place for this unexplainable puzzle piece. I approached a locker in the darkest corner of the cellar. As I wrenched open the rusted door, the feeble cellar light burned out. The darkness was total. Perfect.

Without rumination, I threw the small cardboard shape into the locker and slammed the door. I stumbled more than once as I followed the wall back to the stairs, but in time found myself back on the ground floor. The fresh daylight was inviting and I locked the cellar door behind me.

My puzzle now sits on display for all to see. Guests always express their admiration for my successful completion of something so tedious. Often I hear phrases similar to, “I could never do something like that. I simply don’t have the time,” or “I’m not nearly patient enough.” As far as everyone can tell it is complete. I am the only one who knows that it is not as perfect as it appears to be.

And what of this extra piece? I am confident I can make it fit. There is only one problem. To make everything complete, I believe that I must first pull the existing puzzle apart. It was diabolically designed, that much is clear, and I am confident that it can be reconstructed in such a way as to account for every piece—but as for how long it may take, that I cannot say.