Minnesotans are top-ranked in a sport you've never heard of: Speed jigsaw

Minnesota is a powerhouse in this rapidly growing cold-weather sport. Top-ranked players come from here. The biggest competition in the country is held here. And the sport's national organization is based here.

We're not talking football, cross-country skiing or hockey. Minnesota is the state of speed jigsaw.

"We're definitely one of the strongholds of jigsaw puzzling in the country," said Duluth area resident Valerie Coit, co-chair of the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association, which she helped start in 2020.

And, yes, it is a sport — complete with full-time professionals, national and world championships with livestreamed coverage and cash prizes as high as 1,000 euros (just over $1,000).

But why Minnesota?

Puzzling, it seems, thrives in places where people spend a lot of time indoors. The season starts when the temperatures drop and the nights grow long. And, as Coit so rightly observes, "We're a state that's known for having a long winter."

It's no coincidence that the biggest jigsaw competition in the country, the long-running St. Paul Winter Carnival Jigsaw Puzzle Contest, draws more than 1,200 competitors to downtown St. Paul in the dead of winter.

It's far from the only speed jigsaw competition, however. There's been a recent burst of competitive events around the country, partly driven by the increased interest in puzzles during the pandemic.

A Texas company called speedpuzzling.com holds four online competitions per month, in addition to sponsoring in-person state and regional championships like the Minnesota State Speed Puzzling Championship, which was held last July in St. Paul. The USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association put on a national championship held last year in San Diego. And, in 2019, a World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship was started in Spain.

The growth of serious puzzling has led to puzzle influencers like Karen Kavett, a self-described "professional internet puzzler" from Los Angeles, who has 250,000 subscribers and more than 50 million views on her YouTube channel, Karen Puzzles.

"The sport has just exploded," Coit said. "It's really taking off."

Minnesota's dream team

Online competitions have led some top competitors across the country to form puzzle dream teams, instead of just competing with family and friends. One star puzzler is Sarah Schuler, a 27-year-old St. Paul resident who, until recently, was the top-ranked jigsaw puzzler in the nation.

A competitive puzzler since middle school, Schuler currently is a puzzle pro who makes a living doing social media for the jigsaw puzzle industry (@sarahdoespuzzles on Instagram). So far this year, she's solved about 300 puzzles, amounting to about 167,000 puzzle pieces that she's fitted together.

Her personal record for finishing a 1,000-piece puzzle — the sort of puzzle your family might spend all of the Christmas holidays working on — is just under 90 minutes.

"My brain likes to do puzzles really fast," Schuler said. "When you're in the zone, you're just plugged into that puzzle."

Schuler sometimes teams up with Lauren Kautz, a 24-year-old New Hope resident who won the state championship and is currently second-ranked nationally.

"I probably complete two to three puzzles a week," Kautz said. "I almost consistently have one going on the coffee table."

The third-ranked speed puzzler in the country is Michaela Keener, a 29-year-old Duluth native, who currently is working on a doctorate in rehabilitation and health sciences at the University of Kentucky. She once assembled a 500-piece puzzle in 31 minutes.

"I definitely like putting things into place," Keener said.

A sort of jigsaw Olympics

So Minnesota produces some of the best jigsaw puzzle solvers in the country. But how do they stack up against the rest of the world?

That question was answered last month at the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship in Valladolid, Spain.

The event, a sort of jigsaw Olympics, drew more than 600 competitors from 56 countries including the U.S. and Canada, all of Europe and as far away as India, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and New Zealand.

In the singles final, a race to complete a 500-piece puzzle, Keener came in 17th place. Schuler was a disappointing 45th out of 180 people who qualified for the event. But the puzzle image — a photograph of a sun-washed restaurant patio in Sicily — was one that didn't suit American tastes in speed jigsaw, according to Keener.

"It's a very European scene," Keener said. "It wasn't busy enough."

"I don't like doing sky. I don't like doing photographs," Schuler said. "It was not my kind of puzzle."

Schuler and Keener had a chance for redemption when they teamed up for the pairs event, which was filmed by three roving cameras and streamed on YouTube, where it got more than 70,000 views.

Coit helped provide livestream color commentary of the action.

"I was on air for 29 hours over the course of four days," Coit said. "It really is fun to watch. It's more exhilarating than you would expect."

The 99 teams in the pairs final had to assemble a 1,000-piece puzzle featuring a pop art illustration of colorful buildings titled "Boston 2189."

"You are going to be shocked, everyone," Coit said when the chaotic image was revealed. "It's awful."

But Coit predicted that the eye-boggling image would play to the Minnesotans' strength. And it did.

The puzzle stumped most of the teams who failed to finish it in the two-hour time limit. But Schuler and Keener powered through, their hands telepathically weaving around each other, passing pieces and shoving them into place in a process Schuler calls "slamming."

"These pieces are starting to go really fast," said commentator Coit. "There's a sense of anxiety that creeps in."

The world championship winners were a powerhouse Spanish team. But in second place were the Minnesotans, Schuler and Keener.

"I'm like teary-eyed right now," Coit told the YouTube audience after seeing the Minnesotans get on the podium. "Omigosh, I'm crying."

The next day of the championships was another good one for the Minnesotans. Schuler and Keener were part of a four-person American team called the Misfits that took second place in the four-person team event, just behind a team from the Czech Republic.

The Misfits also set a world championship record in the semifinals by assembling two 1,000-piece puzzles back-to-back in just over an hour and 15 minutes.

Five of the top 10 teams in the four-person event were from America. And in four of those teams, half of the puzzlers came from Minnesota.

"I think we showed we're a country full of good puzzlers. Our puzzle teamwork is very strong," Schuler said. "I'm really excited for next year."

While some people may have a knack for jigsaws, veteran competitor Cynthia Schreiner Smith, the chair of the St. Paul Winter Carnival Jigsaw Puzzle Contest, said anyone can become faster.

In fact, Smith teaches jigsaw puzzle competitions skills in a St. Paul community education class. Here are some tips from her and top Minnesota puzzler Sarah Schuler.

Practice what seems like insignificant stuff, such as dumping the pieces on a table and quickly flipping them right side up at the same time as you sort the edge pieces. Use both hands. Competitive puzzlers also practice quickly removing the plastic wrapping off a puzzle box. "You can save five seconds," Schuler said.

Try assembling a puzzle upside down. Pairs and team competitors typically position themselves on different sides of the table. Also practice assembling a puzzle with the image facing down so you learn how to sort pieces by shape.

Don't let your hand hover above the puzzle while you're trying to figure out where a piece goes. That blocks your teammates from seeing the puzzle. For the same reason, don't wear dangly clothing or jewelry. Wear comfortable shoes. You'll be standing if you're a serious player.

Don't stack pieces or hoard pieces in your hand or put unattached pieces in the middle of puzzle.

Don't eat or drink while competing. It takes too much time. "If you are taking and putting food in your mouth, you are not touching puzzle pieces," Smith said.

Every sport has its own jargon. Here's how to talk the game.

Bag check: Carefully checking that you've gotten all the pieces out of the plastic bag that jigsaw puzzles are packaged in. See also floor check.

Dissectologist: A jigsaw puzzle solver. It comes from the term "dissected map," the earliest form of jigsaw puzzle, which were maps cut up by country that you reassembled to learn geography.

False fit: When a piece seems to fit in the wrong spot.

Flip and sort: What you do after dumping all the pieces on the table. Also called flip and edge.

Floor check: What you do when that last piece seems to be missing.

Jamming: Randomly trying to force a piece in the wrong spot. Also called rotate and jam.

Knob: The rounded tab that interlocks with the hollow in an adjacent piece. Also called a nub or an outie.

Mallery move: A technique to pick up a subgroup of assembled pieces and put it in the correct place in the larger puzzle. It was named after a Minnesota competitor, Leslie Mallery, who was featured in "Wicker Kittens," a documentary about the St. Paul Winter Carnival jigsaw contest. (She now has a "slow puzzling" YouTube channel called TheMalleryMove.)

Puzzle rub: Running the palm of your hand over the surface of a completed puzzle to check that all the pieces are there, and because it feels good.

Puzzband: Jigsaw competitions attract more women than men. Their supportive partners are called puzzbands.

Shape sort: Dividing pieces by shape instead of just color. Often used when trying to put together a section of all one color.

Sorting trays: Small trays to used collect groups of similar pieces. Allowed in some competitions, although restricted in size and number.