German company claims puzzle is world's biggest

[snopes]

Some 15,000 enthusiasts have assembled the world's largest jigsaw puzzle in the southern German town of Ravensburg, Europe's biggest puzzle maker said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080929/...any_big_puzzle

[Mad Jay]

That looks like they just placed the 4000 jigsaws on the ground!!

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Mad Jay

That looks like they just placed the 4000 jigsaws on the ground!!

They just said it was the biggest puzzle; they didn't say it was difficult!

- snopes

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by Mad Jay

That looks like they just placed the 4000 jigsaws on the ground!!

They do all link together, though. (The little puzzles have puzzle-piece edges rather than straight edges). So if that doesn't count as a single jigsaw puzzle, I'm not sure why. But I guess they could link up in any order, rather than having to be in a specific order.

[FullMetal]

what they should have done, is done one of those mosaics that show a larger picture made up of smaller ones. that would have been cool

[Troberg]

I think they cheated:

The participants assembled more-than 4,000 smaller jigsaw puzzles, each with 252 pieces and standard puzzle motifs like animals, maps and landscapes.

Assembling 4000 puzzles with 252 pieces is not the same thing as assembling one big puzzle.

It may be the world's largest puzzle event, but not the largest puzzle.

[Mad Jay]

Originally Posted by Richard W

They do all link together, though. (The little puzzles have puzzle-piece edges rather than straight edges). So if that doesn't count as a single jigsaw puzzle, I'm not sure why. But I guess they could link up in any order, rather than having to be in a specific order.

But, it's not like they have to figure out which goes where. It looks from the photos that any given little puzzle will fit into any other little puzzle. I guess they have the edges to hold the pieces together, not to make it harder

Originally Posted by FullMetal

what they should have done, is done one of those mosaics that show a larger picture made up of smaller ones. that would have been cool

They could have done is have 2 sides to the puzzle. One side will be the little puzzle just like they have now. The other side could be part of a bigger picture. So, after they assemble all the little puzzles, they could turn them around and lay them out in a grid making a big picture of Mother Teresa or Nim Chimpsky or something. At least, they would have made something more than a bunch of little jigsaw puzzles. If I had a 6500 sq ft town square, I would love to have it covered by a cute photo of Nim Chimpsky. That would be cool! They could then stand on Nim Chimpsky and take a photo from a helicopter or something. Yeah!!