The Chicago contestants had only a few hours to do their jigs, so they tackled your everyday closet-variety cardboard puzzles. Alas, there is no grand theory of jigsaw puzzles. Her daughter, who hates sorting, went right to work assembling a white barn surrounded by farm fields and trees. Not surprisingly, most of the contestants were women, including the top three finishers in the solo competition. It turns out women assemble roughly 60 percent of the puzzles sold in the United States.
Women are better at seeing whole designs.
They are also better at recognizing, remembering and matching colors. You see a space and remember that a piece you saw five minutes ago will fit there. The skill became especially evident after an hour and a half, when the Meyers were racing to fill in the last trees and clumps of grass on the farm. But the Meyers saw something else. They snapped piece after piece unerringly into place.