As a follow up on the OpenStreetMap jigsaw, it seems dad has conquered the 1000 piece beast. Here’s what he had to say about his Christmas present:
“I finally finished the jig-saw the day before yesterday, after several days obsessively working on it. Nearly drove your Mum mad because apart from distracting me from the things she thought were more important, it occupied the dining table for several days. It was certainly quite intriguing, a challenging test of topographical knowledge of London. It would make a good training tool for taxi drivers. The lettering was certainly too small and fuzzy. I found a magnifying glass was useful. But even so it was often unreadable, unless it was a street-name which I half-knew or remembered anyway. I expected it would get easier towards the end, when with a limited number or pieces, it would be possible simply to complete the missing geometry of red, green or orange road patterns. In fact it got more difficult in that respect because the pieces remaining contained fewer distinguishing lines. I finally learned that an effective technique was to examine the lettering on each piece to establish which way up it should go, and carefully keep the pieces orientated correctly even if they couldn’t immediately be fitted. Thus it was possible to key the shapes of the remaining pieces as well as the design on them. I found it a more satisfying puzzle than the 500 piece Turner painting of the Fighting Temeraire, still unfinished from last year’s Christmas. This includes a large number or plain pieces of similar colour, which is ultimately boring unless you’re a jig-saw fanatic.”

So there you have it.  It is do-able. That’s a relief.  I hadn’t thought about the text orientation advantage. I guess that does help a lot.

A couple of people have asked me for more information about how to make your own OpenStreetMap jigsaw, or for help with doing so. It’s pretty tricky. I gave some details in my original post, but I could write some tutorials, or even make software to make it easier.  …Low down on my todo list right now though I’m afraid