Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzles

Puzzle-lovers are always looking for a new and different sort of puzzling challenge. Once you've mastered the basics of doing jigsaw puzzles, it can be hard to find something challenging. Here are a few puzzle types that should give you many (many) hours of fun.

Big puzzles may not be inherently harder than regular puzzles, but the shear size of the project can be daunting to the novice puzzler. Though many people consider a 1,000 piece puzzle to be large, there are puzzles out there with 8,000 pieces or more. For the ultimate challenge, you should try what is called the "world's largest jigsaw puzzle" at a whopping 24,000 pieces.

Three dimensional puzzles are a very unique challenge, and are more like building a model than doing a jigsaw puzzle. You can get 3-D puzzles of many different things, but the most popular motifs are buildings and cities. Besides being a change from regular flat puzzles, a big obstacle can be finding a place to put your finished masterpiece.

These are particularly frustrating, especially when the image is the same on both sides. Imagine doing a puzzle when you don't even know if your pieces are right side up or not. Some 2-sided puzzles have 2 different pictures, which doubles your mileage with the puzzle, but doesn't really make it any more difficult to do.

This isn't really a class of puzzle, but one unique puzzle from Ravensburger. There is no picture, all the pieces are silver metallic. But each piece is a different shape from the others, which is how you figure out the pattern.

Another challenge from Ravensburger. These puzzles have a picture that is a mirror image to the one on the box. Just a slight variation but one that can keep you scratching your head for many hours as you try to orient yourself with the picture.

One last unique puzzle style that will confound the most basic principle of puzzle making, which is putting the edge together first. These "edge" puzzles are cut so that every piece in the puzzle has a flat side, so that it's almost impossible to sort out the true edge pieces as your first step.