Puzzling has recently become one of my favourite hobbies, and I recently hosted my first-ever puzzle party to share my love of puzzling with others.
Ever since I started doing puzzles at home, there have been so many positive impacts on my life. Puzzling is a great activity for my mental health, allowing my mind to get offline and slow down. It helps me reconnect with my inner child, and with Good Fortune Puzzle Co.’s puzzles, puzzling has also helped me feel more connected to my Asian heritage. Hosting a puzzle party was the perfect way to introduce my community to puzzling and bring people together in a fun, low-pressure way!
Select your puzzles
The number of puzzles and the number of pieces can shift depending on how many people you plan to invite, how much time you have, and everybody’s skill levels. For my puzzle party, I ordered four 200-piece puzzles from Good Fortune Puzzle Co. This was the perfect amount of puzzles for 8 to 12 people of varying skill levels to complete within 1 hour!
Select a venue
The most important feature of the ideal puzzle party space is large, flat surfaces! Ideally, you’ll want a venue with plenty of table space for the puzzles and comfortable seating for your guests. Make sure the space is clean on the day of the event so puzzle pieces don’t get easily lost. As a bonus, you may want to bring a speaker to play some music while you puzzle!
Prepare refreshments
Have some drinks and snacks ready for your guests to fuel up while they puzzle! I would recommend providing drink cups that you can label with guests’ names and having lids to protect your puzzles from spillage. For snacks, you may also want to choose finger foods that are easy to grab but won’t leave anything sticky on your fingers.
Split into groups
The best way to group your guests depends on your number of puzzles, puzzle piece count, and time constraints. If you have less time available or have puzzles with more pieces, you may want to have more people working on each puzzle to get them completed faster. You can also group people based on skill levels by assigning more challenging puzzles to more experienced puzzlers, or balancing out each group with both experienced and beginner puzzlers. For my puzzle party, I found that having 2-3 people of mixed skill levels per 200-piece puzzle was ideal for completing our puzzles within an hour.
Start puzzling!
Congratulations, you’ve arrived at the best part! If you are doing multiple puzzles with a similar difficulty level, you can even set a timer and turn your party into a friendly speed puzzling competition. Have fun and ready, set, puzzle!
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Katy Ho (she/her) is a Cantonese Canadian writer, activist, and daughter of refugees who explores the intersections of gender, climate, and pop culture through her work. She is the founder of BAD ASIAN, a community that is building the discourse around Asian feminism. When she’s not writing about feminism and climate justice, you can find her hosting book club meetings, visiting her local thrift store, and checking out plant-based restaurants.
