Solving Puzzles

In 2020, when COVID forced us all into lockdown, my girlfriend and I embraced the opportunity to spend extra time together. During this period, we discovered a new game (Catan) and bought many puzzles. Luckily, we could order these items through Amazon and have them delivered to our home.

Playing Catan was a blast, but it always pitted me against my girlfriend and our son. Fun for certain, but it didn’t encourage conversation. Working on a puzzle let us chat while we searched for connecting pieces. We were getting so fast at finishing a puzzle that we forced ourselves to stop using the photograph on the box as a guide.

My girlfriend and I puzzled prior to COVID but only in the winter months when the snow was deep and the temperature cold. We’ve skied before, but it’s not in our blood like some others who live in the 509. Instead, we’d rather hang out together, drink hot cocoa, and puzzle.*

This is a puzzle of characters found in DC Comic books. It was one of my favorite puzzles we did.

Recently, I needed to go back to the beginning of the latest story I was working on to plant more clues that would lead to a satisfactory resolution for the readers. I was writing this one by the seat of my pants (“pantsing”) as opposed to using an outline (“plotting”). I knew what I needed to say, but I had to find the exact places to drop those clues. I had so much fun with this process that I found my girlfriend at the end of my writing session and told her I thought writing a mystery was like building a puzzle.

A frequent question I’m asked at writer conferences is whether I’m a plotter or a pantser. I rarely start a story with a complete outline. Usually, I’ll know where I want to start, only to require an outline halfway through so I can bring the story to completion.

Other times, I’ll have an outline to roughly the midpoint where I discover how I want the book to end, and I race to its conclusion. I’ve occasionally created an outline and stuck to it from beginning to end (The Last Summer) and other times I’ve written a full book without ever outlining (Too Dead to Cry).

Which brings me back to my puzzling story. Writing with an outline is like building a puzzle while referencing the picture on the box. Writing without an outline is like building a puzzle without knowing what the result should look like. Neither version is wrong, but one is decidedly quicker than the other.

* My girlfriend and I didn’t puzzle at all this past winter. We’re both busy of course, but there’s always been a week or two when we get into the activity. However, we had an extremely mild winter. We could get out, go for walks, visit stores, get out of town, you name it. So no puzzling. ☹