Have you ever been to a museum and wondered how long it took the artist to paint what you were looking at? Have you ever imagined a puzzle version of something like Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night and wondered how long it would take to piece together? How about a larger painting? Let's say one that's about 14 ft by 5 ft? Life: The Great Challenge is a 24,000 piece jigsaw puzzle just that size, and the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes it as the world's largest commercially produced jigsaw puzzle (technically for having the most pieces, not its dimensions).
Life is made by Educa Borras and was designed by Royce B.
McClure.
In designing the puzzle, McClure had to create images with extreme detail so the puzzle would not be impossible to put together.
"The challenge for me in a puzzle of this huge size was to eliminate large areas where no changes take place," McClure explains on WorldsLargestPuzzle.
com.
"This, of course, means the puzzle will look quite 'noisy' when shrunk down on the box or in a brochure.
I hope that the puzzlers who accept the challenge to do this puzzle understand that if the art looks perfectly pleasing in a small size, then it will drive you mad with boredom when blown up to a huge size then cut up into small single colored pieces.
" The original artwork is an airbrushed acrylic piece.
It was then scanned and recomposed in a computer.
The entire project took years of work.
"The Lost City art making the bottom right corner of this piece originally took around 400 hours of work by itself," McClure said.
The puzzle was originally on shelves in March of 2007, and according to its "Hall of Fame" page on the website, the first customer completion was not until June of 2007.
The first completion of the puzzle was by the Slater family in Sacramento, California and took 34 days to complete.
Each box of Life contains four bags of 6,000 pieces each in attempt to help the puzzler complete the challenge.
In January 2008, Jossie Williams of Pretoria, South Africa became the first woman to complete the puzzle after mixing all 24,000 pieces before starting.
All previous completions of the puzzle were done in parts.
Life: The Great Challenge, is sold at most puzzle stores and can usually be purchased for around $300.