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02/23/2022 07:30 AMTake it from Teresa Holabird, the competition can be fierce during Edward Smith Library’s annual Puzzle Off, which is hands-down one of the hottest contest tickets in the state for puzzle teams. After a two-year pandemic pause, the Puzzle Off returns to the Smith Library in Northford on Saturday, March 12.
“We are turning away teams. We are maxed out,” says Teresa, Smith’s adult services librarian, adding, “I really feel this is probably Connecticut’s largest puzzle competition.”
Teresa first heard the words “puzzle competition” more than a decade ago while networking with a Middlebury public library professional. At Teresa’s request, her professional peer also shared contest rules for Teresa to peruse. Next, Teresa found a willing partner, part-time North Branford public library staffer Nick Balletto, to help her pull off Smith’s first Puzzle Off.
“Nick and I have run this from the inception,” says Teresa. “We started in 2010 and had four teams come. It was a lot of fun, so we decided to do it once a year.”
As Teresa has found out, dedicated contest puzzlers may be serious about their table-top teamwork, but they also like to bring a bit of their own party to the table. Through the years, many have arrived ready to build their puzzles in playful outfits customized to their team names.
“We get such a kick out of the team names and the team themes,” says Teresa. “People do not have to feel compelled to do it, but it’s taken on such a life of its own.”
This year, Smith’s Puzzle Off is prepped to welcome 15 teams including the Piece Makers, World Piece, Loose Pieces, Missing Pieces, Getting Jiggy with It, Inner Piece, Puzzle Free or Die, Piecing it Together, the Tie Dye Team, and The Modge Podgers.
“Some of them have been here from the beginning,” says Teresa. “The Getting Jiggy team, they have modge-podged every one of these puzzles, I believe, since the inception. The Tie Dye team has won three different years, so they’re our most winning team.”
The Tie Dye Team won in 2015 and 2016 and again in 2018, when the competition had ramped up to include 14 teams totaling 84 players. Unfortunately, things cooled down for all of the competitors in 2020, when COVID canceled the event.
“We were supposed to have 17 teams come two years ago,” says Teresa. “The pandemic shut us down a day before it was supposed to happen. We had two teams coming from as far as Norwich and Fairfield. They were both new to us two years ago, but never got to come.”
While the Puzzle Off had to be postponed in 2020 and again in 2021, the two far-flung teams confirmed they will be coming to town on March 12 to compete, together with 13 more of the original 17 teams that had signed on for the 2020 contest.
Back in about November, 2021, “we called or emailed all the teams to gauge whether they might want to come out to play in March,” says Teresa. “Everybody except for two teams said ‘Yes.’ We thought 15 is probably enough for right now, and what we feel the building should be able to handle this year with social distancing—although we were already kind of social distancing, before social distancing! The teams are always spaced out. We have them at tables all through the adult department all through the kids’ department, upstairs and downstairs.”
Keeping their distance is just one of several rules outlined for teams attempting to win the Puzzle Off, which gives each team the same, previously sight-unseen, 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle to complete as quickly as possible.
“At 9:40, we do the introductions,” says Teresa. “At 9:45, we hand out the puzzles and they run to their table, and you could hear a pin drop. At 11, they cover their puzzles with newspapers so no one can see each other’s progress and break for lunch. At 12 o’clock sharp, everybody is ready to become this big puzzle mass again.”
To keep the playing field level, Teresa won’t even disclose the puzzle theme, much less the puzzle itself, until all of the teams are assembled, in person, at the Smith. It generally takes the winning team upwards of two hours to complete the puzzle, with the fastest team on record, to date, crossing the finish line in one hour and 40 minutes.
“We have teams that are very serious about this, that practice and work on strategy with their team members. And then we have retired teachers or family members that don’t care if they finish or they don’t,” says Teresa. “But I have to say, I’m amazed year after year that almost every team finishes that puzzle by the time we have to leave this building” at 3 p.m.
To keep it interesting and competitive, all of the puzzles Teresa and Nick have selected through the years have a pretty high difficulty level —but not to the point where they might lose that fun factor.
“There is one puzzle that Nick and I joke about, but we would never do it: The whole, entire puzzle is just pencils. I guarantee you some of these teams could have done it,” says Teresa.
With all of the energy the teams put in to pulling off a win, you might think there’s a hefty cash prize at stake. Not so.
“We come up with a just a token little prize for the winning team, something that has to do with the puzzle theme on some level, and then everyone gets to keep that puzzle when they leave,” says Teresa, noting the Smith also hosts the contest each year free of charge.
While several teams still hail from North Branford and towns in the surrounding area, it has been rewarding for Teresa to see the Puzzle Off become a signature event not only for the Smith, but for the state.
“I never thought this Puzzle Off would turn into what it has,” she says. “There are a few libraries that have done them, but their numbers never really took off to this level.”
For Teresa, it’s really not that puzzling why these teams come here looking for a contest.
“It’s seeing who can complete a 1,000-piece puzzle first, but mostly, it’s just a great time for people. The teams are between four and nine players, and most people now sign up with friends or family. It’s a midwinter kind of activity. It’s just something different to do, in this beautiful library building of ours.”
Finding interesting things for library guests to do has always been a significant part of Teresa’s work. A lifelong North Branford/Northford resident, Teresa grew up on North Street next to the town’s other public library, the Atwater.
“My family, the Holabird family, had six houses on North Street at the time,” says Teresa. “My great-grandfather was first selectman at one time, and two of my great-aunts helped to start the League of Women Voters, which was one of the first nationally incorporated leagues.”
In the family spirit of helping her community, “...I used to volunteer at the Atwater,” as a kid, says Teresa. “And in high school, they had a position which some libraries still have, called a page. So, I started as a page back in 1983, and I worked here part-time for six years.
Then, when the Smith’s adult services librarian position opened up, she applied for the full-time role.
“I didn’t really expect to get it, but I got it!” says Teresa. “I was 20, turning 21, at the time, so I was still in college. And the rest has been history.”
As a Northford resident and mother of three grown children, Teresa says the stars definitely aligned to give her the chance to find a career that’s now stretched for more than 30 years in her hometown.
“I love the small town feel of getting to see grandkids of people coming in,” she says. “People will say, ‘How come you’ve been at this job for so long?’ It’s something new, every day. My original career path was supposed to have been working in geriatrics, and before that, I had been studying child psychology. I’ve found that working as an adult librarian in a small town, I get to see the little kids and the older people, and it’s the best of both worlds. This would never have been what I thought would happen for my career, but I couldn’t love it more.”