By 
Sometimes I get a lot of time on my hands. I have a few hours to pass and I want to make myself feel smarter at the same time. This is why I do puzzles.
I’ve been buying puzzles magazines from Borders since early high school, meaning I’ve been doing this for just about a decade. Whether it’s a crossword, a logic puzzle, or something entirely different, I like spending time on a good puzzle. When I can work my way through an especially tough puzzle, I feel a sense of triumph – as if my brain was able to overcome obstacles and conquer the puzzle’s creator. I’ve been working through puzzle magazines though I recognize that I fall far outside of their normal demographic.
Other real back-page ads I've seen on this magazine: tomato-plant holders and diabetic socks.
Though the typical reader may be over the age of sixty, I stand by the fact that these are intellectually rewarding and everyone should try one the next time they have two (or more) free hours. Of course, I understand that many of you just don’t have the time to sit down and do a good puzzle. That’s why I’m starting a segment called Doin’ Puzzles With Tinz, in which you can watch me go through the process! It’s almost like you’re doing them by yourself!
Today’s Doin’ Puzzles With Tinz puzzle is called Art On The Square. This one isn’t really a puzzle as much as it is an exercise in patience. You are given a number of out-of-order squares containing various shapes:
…and your job is to fill in a blank grid, replicating the drawings as closely as possible in the correct spaces. For instance, the drawing in the third column, first row is labeled A6. All you have to do is draw what you see in square A6 of the Battleship-type grid. This was one of my starting points at 9:00 AM.
Aaaand we're off!
Keep in mind that I’m doing other things throughout the day and am not exclusively working on this nonsense. I am, however, returning to this whenever possible. Here we are again at 10:30AM:
It's really coming together!
And again at noon:
Almost there!
By this point I’m getting rather frustrated by not having an idea of what the hell I’m drawing, so I’m employing the jigsaw-puzzle technique of completing all of the edges. Which I manage to finish by…fuck…2:30PM.
What the fuck. Aside from putting in that nice border around the edge, I haven’t got a goddamn clue what’s being put on this page. Well maybe I’ll have a better idea by 4:30PM:
Fucking dickshit. This is getting ridiculous. I’ve been working on this pretty consistently for over 7 hours and it seems like there’s still over half of it to go. I can sort of see a Mayan temple-y thing at the top, but I’ll shit in a dick if you can tell me what the bottom half is supposed to be. If I’m going to finish this in this century, I’m going to have to focus. Just a half-hour later, at 5:00PM:
At this point I at least have the satisfaction that I’m indeed drawing a Mayan temple-y thing. But what IS that thing? A flower? Some sort of Mayan myth-beast? GIVE ME YOUR SECRETS!!
I manage to finish at 6:00PM. Nine hours after beginning. And the entire time, a piece of paper was telling me what to do.
I"VE UNRAVELED YOUR MYSTERY! FUCK YOU, DEMON!
Frustrating? Yes. Absolutely. But this is just a side effect of the satisfaction of a) knowing that you’ve been able to solve something that not many people even bother to attempt, b) looking at a finished product that earlier was just a blank page, and c) realizing that I’ve been able to pass a large chunk of time that could have been spent learning how to play the saxophone or something.
Until next time, keep puUuUuUzZzZzling! Excelsior!
