Friday, February 27, 2015
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Development director of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County Debbie Liptak began putting out puzzles before the start of the Puzzle Swap at the Boardman library.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.The attendees of the Puzzle Swap event at the Boardman library began their search of which puzzles they wanted to take home.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.A woman examined a puzzle to see if it was one she wanted to take home during the Puzzle Swap event at the Boardman library.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Development director of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County Debbie Liptak explained the rules of the Puzzle Swap before it began.
By TIM CLEVELAND
The Boardman library hosted its monthly puzzle swap on Jan. 14 that gives area residents the opportunity to turn in unwanted puzzles and exchange them for new ones to do.
The library has been hosting the event the second Wednesday of every month for the last three years.
“We have a lot of seniors who participate, a lot of people from nursing homes,” development director of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County Debbie Liptak said. “They take them and do them, then they bring them back again.”
Liptak said she got the idea for doing the puzzle swap from a library patron.
“It was friend of the library who said, ‘I think it would be a great idea,’ ” she said. “I said, ‘All right, let’s try it.’ All the leftover puzzles go to the book store in (the) Poland (library) and we sell them for very cheap. On Thursday mornings when I come back from the puzzle swap, there’s always people waiting to buy up the puzzles.”
The puzzle swap is done at the Boardman library due to it being the central location in the library system, thus making it easier for people to travel there.
Each attendee of the event brought up to six puzzles and left them on a table outside the Boardman library’s meeting room.
Liptak then took the puzzles and put them on tables in the meeting room while the attendees waited in the children’s room next door.
Liptak said there have been as many as 55 people who attended the puzzle swap in the past, with 20 coming on Jan. 14. Liptak ended up filling six tables with puzzles.
With that done, she went into the children’s room and explained the rules of the swap, which allowed them to take home an equal number of puzzles that they brought. She cautioned against any fighting over the same puzzle and said to make sure any puzzle brought in is complete and in good condition.
Liptak then allowed them to enter the meeting room and let them loose to grab puzzles they wanted.
Liptak said the most popular size puzzle is 500 pieces, which is large enough to give a challenge, yet small enough to be completed rather quickly. She said the largest puzzle she’s seen during the Puzzle Swaps is 15,000 pieces.
The puzzles ranged from 100 pieces up to 1,500 pieces.
“People who do puzzles may have two or three puzzles going at the same time,” she said. “It’s a favorite pastime. There are people in the summer time who have tables out on their porch and they’re doing puzzles. They like their puzzles. The most popular puzzles are the 500s (pieces) because they can get them done fast.”
The next Puzzle Swap is scheduled for Feb. 11.