What is the biggest competitive puzzling hack? Well you might be surprised to hear but I’ve got a hack that’s all about when your speed isn’t improving, but should be because you are giving 100%. It’s a useful hack when when you’ve practiced your heart out and even at the speed puzzle competition, your speed tanks. You can’t go as fast as you expected, leaving you so disappointed.
Competitive Puzzling Hack: Stop Slow Competition Times
As we all know, the reason we search for a puzzling contest near me is to actually have fun and test our skills. Over time, the idea of ever competing outside our community seems impossible as we’ve stalled. Our latest completion times seems to be around the same time we’ve had to complete a 500-piece puzzle in the past few months. What is there to do?
How to Improve Your Speed for Better Completion Times
I know it’s important to share only you know if your completion time has evened out. If you already feel you have found your best completion time, but want to do better, I understand the feeling. If you are looking for a fix, then before you read on, make sure you need to be doing all the basics. It’s a competitive puzzling hack, but it works for anyone playing jigsaw puzzle competitions. It’s not a cheat as you need to be doing the basics for it to work. Consider your competitive puzzle play like a building, you need to start at the basement.
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Make sure you are practicing a couple of times a week. Remember to be focusing on your peripheral vision. Of course, it’s a good idea to be chatting with other players on strategies. If you’ve done all this then you need to use this competitive puzzling hack to figure out where to focus next.
Well, I’ve got a hack that worked for me….
Looking at the puzzle competitions near me, I longed for as many jigsaw puzzle contests that I could find. Before I tried this idea, my time was 2 minutes too long. Talk about a puzzling nightmare! What happened to my completion time? I realized I wouldn’t even place in the top 20 with my completion time when completing the puzzle. In fact my time had evened off to such a point that I didn’t even feel that I was to compete in the same division I used to. I was stressing out!
My dream of heading to the USA Jigsaw Nationals was out of reach. I was in a speed slump. Feeling awful, I had to figure out what my problem was…exactly. And I had no intention of paying someone to diagnose the problem. After all, this is a hobby. I don’t want to spend more money and then hear the gossip.
Breaking Down Speed Puzzling Slumps
Anyone who has slumping speed needs to figure out where is the problem in the jigsaw puzzle construction. You can’t snap your fingers and have an answer. You need to consider where you are having issues. Use this competitive puzzling hack to focus on your play.
I’ve determined there are 3 areas of completion times slumps to consider:
Posture, Surroundings, Atmosphere: If your slump is bringing down your completion times because of you as a person. It could be how you are standing, sitting or leaning over the table.
Other possible reasons include your surroundings. You might be uncomfortable, distracted or feeling some way that impacts your puzzle play (hot, cold, etc.) And the overall atmosphere of the area might not be your best place to play puzzles
Focus, Follow, Finding: The impact of your competitive puzzling lacks complete focus. Your mind and fingers are not connecting regularly. It could be you are not seeing pieces as quickly as needed. The time limit creeps up on you and you are finding you need to look at the puzzle boxes too often.
Skills Improvement: Your jigsaw puzzle competition skills need improvement. Perhaps you might need more practice or maybe you need to work on your individual skills to pick up the pace. Going faster, the reality is that piece count is beyond your skill level.
How to Find Your Find Your Competitive Puzzling Problem
What is slowing you down? An easy way to figure out what is the problem is video taping yourself. Yes, this is a easy competitive puzzling hack. Pull out your cell phone and set up a tripod in your jigsaw puzzle location.
Turn on the camera and speed puzzle for a minimum of 20 minutes. It doesn’t matter if it’s a puzzle that’s 1000 pieces or 500 pieces. In fact, play a puzzle from a puzzle company you love.
During this filming, speed puzzle like your life depends on it. Pretend you are at a national jigsaw puzzle competition and play fast as you can. Once you’ve completed this task, it’s time to review the footage.
The video will give you clues on your speed puzzling slump. Watching the video might just look like you playing a jigsaw puzzle. However you need to ramp the video to find your slump and your issues.
Make the video go 2x or 3x faster to quickly pace the action. Make sure you note every time you see yourself pause. In particular, where you move your body away from the puzzle image. In those moments, you will find your clue for your puzzle slump.
This trick allows you to see your puzzle play. Improvement comes when identifying what made you pause and then fixing it. Typically it’s in one of the three areas mentioned above.
Once you have found the clues to your slump, then start making positive changes in your jigsaw puzzle competitive play. Practice new ways to play that address the issues you saw. Don’t forget you can resource my Speed Puzzling Tips to help adjust your play too!
Remember competitive puzzling speed slumps are a temporary issue. Use this competitive puzzling hack and work out your issues for your best play ever. Knowing what to change will increase your speed.
See you at the next speed puzzling championship!
