Further adventures in creating a custom math-themed jigsaw puzzle

nibblestew.blogspot.com

23 points·pabs3··7 comments

I've wondered how hard it would be to make a "jigsaw puzzles as a service" company. Like, you send a picture and they send you back a jigsaw puzzle of that picture. It would make for a great gift for someone who likes puzzles.

So hard that literally every jigsaw maker on the planet do exactly this.

https://www.vistaprint.co.uk/photo-gifts/custom-jigsaw-puzzl...

https://www.ravensburger.us/photo-puzzles/index.html

I witnessed someone setting up such a business as a side gig. It was pretty straightforward, but they had a background in printing and already had access to printing and cutting machinery. They shut it down in a couple of months. Their takeaway was it is much smaller market one would imagine with plenty of competition. Many players are much more integrated with other kind of custom printing offerings as well (mugs, calendars, t-shirts etc.). Without a unique selling point it was not worth pursuing.

Most of the photo stores out here do that... even Aldi (hofer here)

https://www.hoferfoto.si/sestavljanka

They even make wooden ones ( https://www.hoferfoto.si/sestavljanka-iz-lesa )

(not an ad, just showing that it's a cheap service)

Would a pulsed pattern work better than a continuous gradient if you have variation to contend with?

So starting with solid dark grey, ending at solid light grey and in between doing a human visible pattern of on/off that varied along the length?

This feels like a good effort at making a jigsaw puzzle which is optimally simple to complete - although I think each piece is identical which may increase complexity.

In the previous entry they mention that the connector pieces are randomly perturbed so they aren't all identical but variations.

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