The Jigsaw That Comes With a Piece Already Missing

Every jigsaw puzzle carries a secret fear. It sits quietly in the box while you sort the edges, build the corners and spend a whole rainy weekend on a blue sky that seems to contain no clues at all. Then, at the very end, with a single gap left and the whole family gathered round, the fear comes true. A piece is missing. The Missing Piece Jigsaw takes that fear and removes it, simply by getting the disappointment over with at the factory.

Each puzzle is beautifully made, with thick card, a glossy finish and a picture of something peaceful, such as a lighthouse at sunset or a field of sunflowers. Printed clearly on the lid, in friendly lettering, are the words 999 pieces included. The missing piece is chosen at random during manufacture, so nobody, not even the company, knows which one it will be. It might be an edge. It might be the lighthouse door. It might be a piece of sky indistinguishable from forty others.

The manufacturer says customers find the experience surprisingly relaxing. Freed from the pressure of completion, people puzzle more slowly and argue less. Nobody accuses the dog. Nobody empties the vacuum cleaner bag onto a newspaper. When the final gap appears, the family simply looks at it, nods, and agrees it is exactly where it was always going to be.

There is a premium edition for the truly committed. It comes with a small sealed envelope containing the missing piece, and a certificate confirming that the envelope must not be opened until the puzzle has been finished apart from that one space. Very few people have ever opened it. Most say that, by the time they get there, they no longer want to spoil it.

A deluxe version adds a matching frame with a small brass plaque that reads almost, and the company is developing a crossword with one clue that has no answer and a sock drawer that already has an odd sock in it. Critics have described the range as pointless. The company agrees, and says that is exactly what makes it so restful.

The joke plays on something psychologists have studied for about a hundred years. Researchers noticed that people tend to keep thinking about tasks that are unfinished, while completed tasks slip out of mind. This became known as the Zeigarnik effect, after the psychologist who studied it, and it is often used to explain why a nearly finished puzzle, a half-read book or an unanswered question can nag at you so persistently. Later studies have not always found the effect as clearly, but the feeling itself is very familiar.

Jigsaws themselves began, in the eighteenth century, as a way of teaching geography: maps were glued to wood and cut along the borders of countries, so children could learn by putting the world back together. They have been sold as pastimes ever since. Part of their charm is precisely that final click of the last piece. So a jigsaw with a piece missing is not really useless. It is just very, very honest.