Kristel Pennings from Valkenswaard is currently training day and night to peak in the finals of the NK Jigsaw Puzzles. “Definitely. I haven’t slept for nights,” Kristel laughs. In Brabant Today she talks enthusiastically about her passion: the jigsaw puzzle.
Altitude training, exploring the course or training until you almost literally weigh an ounce. None of that is spent on a puzzler. What does the preparation for the NK Jigsaw Puzzles, with the final on May 7, look like for Kristel? “I’ve been puzzling for as long as I can remember. So it’s a training camp of my whole life. You play at the National Championships with four as a team. We are currently training day and night.”
Kristel and her teammates prepare for the National Championships by putting together many puzzles. “Certainly! We make agreements in advance: how do we attack the puzzle? Who does which piece? For example, we also have an agreement that we only talk about puzzling, otherwise we will just be talking about nothing.”
“Never start with the edges of the puzzle.”
The team doesn’t really have a division of roles. “We do have someone who likes to put the puzzle pieces with air or the edges of the puzzle. Every team member has his preference. At the Dutch Championship you don’t know in advance which puzzle you will be presented with,” says Kristel.
Her boyfriend is the coach of the team. “He will mainly look at other teams. How far are the opponents? What are their tactics? Kind of spying, but I better not say that now. In the final we compete against 45 teams. Last time we finished nineteenth, but now we have trained even more, so that should work.”
Does she have a golden tip for the home puzzler? “Never start with the edges of the puzzle, but with the same colors.”