puzzles

BlueHammer Puzzle System © 

 

The BlueHammer Puzzle System© is an innovative refinement of the traditional pastime— more fun, more flexible, more challenging and with puzzles of a higher quality than the ones you remember.

smarter selection 

Looking for a playdate activity?

A Plan B for a rainy vacation weekend with the family?

Something for the kids?

Something to decompress with when they’re finally down? 

Different puzzles are suitable for different users and different occasions.

Each set of BlueHammer Puzzles builds the same two high-resolution images into nine distinct configurations— from 6 pieces to 500 pieces; from traditional edges to more challenging borderless puzzles; and either single-sided or double-sided formats. The puzzles come in 4x6”, 8x10” and 12x16” sizes.

A new set is introduced every week.

Before you’ve committed to the selection you can more accurately gauge the difficulty level—bunny slope to black diamond—and more reliably determine the best fit for the problem-solver. 

The variations of the same image permit older and younger partners (more and less proficient partners, perhaps) to put their heads together if they want to.

Each thumbnail displays the cut pattern over each image. A 142-piece puzzle may deliver the challenge you normally associate with 500 pieces. The images in Set 1 may be more (or less) complicated than the images in Set 3. Why not determine that beforehand?

As for the double-sided puzzles, they’re really three puzzles in one: the A-side, the B-side and the initial sorting of the two sides scrambled together. The same puzzle stays fresh longer.

The picture-side-up, find-the-edges, automatic pilot approach doesn’t work…unless you want it to. 

Pre-sort the sides for younger problem solvers until they get the hang of it or let them jump into the deep(er) end of the pool right away. Which puzzle are you putting together anyway? Start thinking “out of the box” right out of the box.

more social, more collaborative

Jumble the puzzles together!

Double-sided puzzles put a new twist on collaboration— three puzzles in one if you’re flying solo, five puzzles in one with a co-pilot who has mastered a different set. 

Not only do the puzzles stay fresher for everyone, but younger problem solvers get that boost in self-confidence that comes with being able to explain to their partners how their own puzzle works. 

Again, the puzzlemeister can adjust the activity to suit the play window, as well as the skill levels or the temperaments of the participants. 

Without even having to construct a single puzzle, just sorting the pieces into their respective images is fun! And engages the problem-solving and critical thinking skills, the goal-setting and strategizing skills that are the hidden but widely-recognized benefits of puzzle building. 

(Concentration, memory, patience, fine motor skills, the development of visual-spatial sophistication….the kids never need to know any of that!)

lifelong fun

Not that kids should have all the fun. There’s no silver bullet for dementia and Alzheimers avoidance but the evidence suggests that jigsaw puzzling is a good thing.*

 All of the social and cognitive benefits of puzzle building accrue to the rest of us as well.

high-quality construction

Don’t you hate it when you have to pull apart poorly-cut pieces before you can start or when the pieces bend and the image layer delaminates while you’re putting the puzzle together?

You don’t have to worry with these puzzles.

BlueHammer puzzles are laser-cut from acid-free matboard. The “cardboard” pieces fit together precisely.  

The chunkier double-sided pieces are encased in acrylic, which makes for easier handling for younger and older fingers. And the acrylic surfaces are easily wiped off between group sessions.

convenient

Ever stepped on that puzzle on the floor? Eaten dinner around the puzzle you almost finished? Had to put it away—unfinished—before company arrived?

The 12x16” maximum puzzle dimensions are designed to fit on a TV tray or a classroom desktop. They’re large enough to accommodate the complexity of a 500-piece puzzle and small enough to be portable. Move it from the kitchen to the bedroom, from the basement to the backyard. Early finishers can work quietly at their desks while the rest of the class completes the test.

 

Put the devices down and step away from the screens! For quality family or alone time, reconnect and decompress the old-fashioned way. The BlueHammer Puzzle System will get you there!

 

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174231/ 

”We found that JP skill was highly associated with global visuospatial cognition and all measured visuospatial cognitive abilities indicating that solving JPs strongly taps multiple visuospatial cognitive processes including perception, constructional praxis, mental rotation, speed, flexibility, working memory, reasoning, and episodic memory. This result is in line with a study with cognitively healthy children that found strong correlations (rs > 0.5) of JP performance with a figure copy task and two visuospatial intelligence tests that were structurally similar to jigsaw puzzling (Dykens, 2002).”