We'll even send you a video clip to show how we do it.
]]>I've always felt a little uncomfortable with Comic Books in perfect condition. Seems to me they should be out of those plastic covers and dinged up a little. I assume a few of our Comic Book Covers will remain in the shrink wrap, but I hope most of them will spend part of their life scattered on a kitchen table. Perhaps customers can be convinced to buy two? That way they can enjoy this Lois Sutton collage without missing out on the fortune....
]]>In a way it makes it easier for us to choose what to produce... We manufacture puzzles we like, because the only thing we know for certain is that no matter how popular or ignored a Hennessy Puzzle is, we will have to look at a lot of them over the years...and our friends may have to get them for presents.
]]>Thorn,
I have decided to try to impress a girl by getting her a 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle. I’m trying to decide which one to get. I was thinking that American Musclecar Red White and Blue Puzzle looks like fun.
Sincerely,
Bob
Dear Bob,
What are you nuts? That Musclecar Puzzle is really hard. If she drives a GTO and is a jigsaw puzzle maniac you may have some chance. Otherwise try to act sophisticated with the Mid Century or Vintage Trailers, or play it safe with the African Animals.
Thorn,
I’m going to the mountains with some people I don’t know very well. It may be a lot of fun, but it might be awkward. Any suggestions?
Sincerely,
Mary (not my real name)
AKA Mary,
Stay away from the map puzzles. People who know the territory have an advantage and if you have one of those obnoxious people who can turn anything into a competition. They will either be too happy or too unhappy. It only takes one person like that to ruin the whole weekend. Then again, if you’re that person….
Thorn (my real name)
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It occurred to me that emergency kits should come with jigsaw puzzles. Always something to do. Doesn't require power. Sure, you could read, but that's not very social. Next time there's a power outage I will make sure we have a jigsaw puzzle ready (not hard to do around here) and remember to eat the ice-cream before it melts. In the words of John Wooden, "failure to prepare is preparing for failure."
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The batch # is stamped on one of the long sides of the outside of the box.
Nobody is perfect I guess, but every time I see a thousand jigsaw puzzle pieces poured out of a plastic bag I am amazed at how rarely a customer tells us he/she is missing a piece. Imagine having to make sure every single piece goes into every single bag before the puzzle leaves the plant. When the bag is opened and dumped on the coffee table every single piece has to be rescued from the cat, the floor, and the cuff of uncle Jack's pants. Once in a rare while we do hear from a customer who has the dreaded 999 piece problem.
It would be mean to send a new 1000 piece puzzle to start over, so we do our best to find the missing piece from some cannibalized puzzles we keep around here. We get the production batch number and a picture of the spot where the piece needs to fit. If we have an assembled puzzle available we can usually find the orphan in a few minutes. The real fun is when we don't have an assembled puzzle available. In that case we spread all the pieces out hoping the color will be obvious. If that doesn't work we take the right side up pieces off the table leaving about 500 blank blue piece on the table. My daughter can look at shapes and pick out the right piece in minutes. I'm glad it happens so rarely. It's still fun.
]]>There are years in most teenagers’ lives when verbal communication almost entirely shuts down. You can text your children but if you are in a period when “fine”, “o.k.”, “do I have to”, and “Mr. Collins is an idiot” us all the verbal communication you share, try breaking out a jigsaw puzzle. Do not suggest that your teenager help you. Don’t try to make eye contact. You will be surprised how often these creatures whose main goal in life is to cause chaos will follow their natural human instict to find a few pieces. They may ever sit down for a while and share short conversations. Once they are comfortable you might be able to bring up, tattoos, smoking, all kinds of stuff.
]]>When I was a young man I rented a room in a Victorian mansion in Seattle owned by ninety-year-old man who decorated the place with his paintings. He wasn’t a very skilled painter, but when he told you about the pictures (and sometimes about the old paintings he covered up when he painted over ones he bought for the canvas) they came alive. I often think if him recapturing his youth (“that guy in the red hat on the wagon is my little brother”) at the easel he had set up in the basement of the house he grew up in.
Here at Hennessy Puzzles we’re not artists. We use images by talented artists (and never cover up other people’s art to save money). We know challenging and fun puzzles can be produced using dull colors. We prefer bright colors. We like our puzzles. We hope you do too.
We started the story for each of our puzzles. We would love to hear not only reviews of our puzzles, but also stories about doing them, or stories about doing other puzzles. Heck, we are suckers for stories about almost anything.
We know we are asking a lot. We know how valuable stories are, and we aren’t offering anything but the opportunity to share them. We’ll make up the stories if we need to, but we’d prefer to use yours. If you have ideas for future puzzles we’d like to hear them too. Who knows?
]]>stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? . . . And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.
- Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Those “puzzlers” that we rely on — our brains — can use all the help they can get to stay in shape. Just like the rest of our body, with regular exercise our “puzzler” maintains a healthy level of fitness and is less likely to get, well, sore.
Here’s the good news: jigsaw puzzles are a fantastic way to exercise your brain. Check out these Brain Boost facts:
Jigsaw puzzles are like personal trainers for your gray matter, stimulating continuous activity throughout all parts of your brain. This increases their efficiency and capacity. Also, while you are memorizing colors and shapes, hunting down that funky piece with red and black stripes, your short-term memory is getting a shot in the arm. You may never lose your car keys again.
Jigsaw puzzles engage BOTH brain hemispheres – right-brain functions and left-brain functions. Your logical left brain is a problem solver. Your creative right brain likes to look at the big picture and is more intuitive and subjective. When you work on a jigsaw puzzle, you are causing both sides of your brain to work in tandom.
Working on and solving jigsaw puzzles makes us alert, increases our concentration and expands our creativity. More good news: because it is a calm, quiet activity — unlike a madcap evening of, say, B-I-N-G-O — putting together jigsaw puzzles slows our breathing, reducing our heart rate and blood pressure.
Dopamine is something you want more of. A chemical produced by the brain that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers, dopamine production is increasedwhen your brain is engaged in working through a jigsaw puzzle. It also helps regulate movement and emotional responses. Dopamine deficiency results in Parkinson’s Disease; also, people with low dopamine activity may be more prone to addiction. Keep in mind that a little healthy addiction to jigsaw puzzles is good for you!
Jigsaw puzzle meditation? Yep. Turns out putting together jigsaw puzzles and focusing on the same image for long periods of time actually mimics meditation, bringing calm and peace of mind. Ommmmm . . .
Finally: think of working a jigsaw puzzle as a little therapy session. Every now and then, our lives may seem, well, puzzling. The simple activity of losing ourselves in the peaceful practice of working on a jigsaw puzzle often helps us to have a subconscious shift of piecing together parts of our lives that we could not see clearly before. What was hazy in our mind may now more closely match the picture on the “lid.”
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]]>Welcome to Hennessy Puzzles, a tiny subdivision of a small family run publishing empire. For a couple decades we have been in the map business, publishing recreational maps (KYM GUIDES) for the Western United States. As our responsibilities grew we had a less time to travel the world researching maps and more time at home doing things like jigsaw puzzles.
Hennessy Communications has looked like a confusion of jobs, addresses, pets, kids, relatives, and homework assignments, but, with some concentration, patterns emerge. Sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. These first three Hennessy puzzles are based on maps. We originally planned to use KymGuides as basemaps but they needed so much illustration to make a good puzzle that it was easier to start from scratch. We wanted beautiful images and accurate maps. We shy away from the word “educational” to avoid scaring the children, but we assume you will appreciate knowing where Coalinga, California, Winslow, Arizona, Arlington Ave, Los Angeles after finishing our maps puzzles.
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We put a lot of effort into pictures here at Hennessy Puzzles, but we know the importance of a good story. I bet most of the images you have hanging in your house come with a story. “We picked this one up at a street stand in Barcelona. That one is of the kids when we first moved into the house. Uncle Joe painted that one.” Most images come with a story. Sometimes the story is more important than the image….especially if Uncle Joe didn’t have must talent as a painter. All our puzzles have stories to go with them. We hope our stories help you enjoy our puzzles. We’d like to hear your stories.
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