
Puzzle maker download#
Download individual puzzles or entire books in one click - VALUE $97.Quick Edit Dashboard helps you edit your wordlist on the fly - VALUE $97.Customize Title & Description to make your puzzles unique - VALUE $97.“It is the perfect antidote to that,” he says. In today’s world, screens are ubiquitous. But even after the pandemic fades, Wirth isn’t worried about the company’s longevity. The coronavirus pandemic has shown Liberty Puzzles to be its own kind of social vehicle, and Wirth continues to emphasize that message as more customers flock to his puzzles. “It takes away from the all-encompassing feeling of stress that we carry around.”

“The pleasure that people get from the activity has a lot to do with being able to have focus put toward a positive activity,” he says. “But you can do a puzzle and solve that problem.”Įldridge sees puzzling in much the same way. “In times of crisis, people don’t have much control over their lives,” Williams says. In February 1933, American puzzle makers were churning out 10 million puzzles per week. Jigsaws reached the height of their popularity during the Great Depression. “That’s when I stumbled into the puzzle idea,” he says.Īccording to puzzle historian Anne Williams, puzzle sales often swell during crises. “So, I immediately joined the MBA program and I still wasn’t that interested in it.” He spent four years in the financial industry before he decided he needed a change. “After my first year, I knew I wasn’t going to be a lawyer,” he says. Instead, he studied political science and art history at Stanford, and taught math and history before attending law school at CU Boulder. When Wirth went off to college, puzzles were not at the top of his mind. On family vacations to Crested Butte, he and Kelsey would stay up half the night competing with their parents to see who could finish a puzzle first. “My mom held them back from us because she knew they were fragile and valuable,” he says.
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“He would sometimes choose to stay inside and read these thick instruction manuals instead of coming out to play with me,” Kelsey says.īut it wasn’t until he was a teenager that Wirth first got a glimpse of his mother’s Falls Puzzles. He would spend hours sitting on the concrete floor of his parents’ basement playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends. As a child, Wirth gravitated toward games-solitaire, Stratego, chess-the more complex the better. “Growing up with a father in a position like that serves as inspiration to become your own person,” Kelsey says. Those who know Wirth never envisioned he would follow in his parents’ footsteps. “And it just wasn’t that enticing to me.” Chris Wirth and Jeff Eldridge in the early days of Liberty Puzzles. “I saw that world up close and personal,” he says. from the University of Colorado Boulder, Wirth had the credentials to do just about anything, including following his father into politics. A Stanford University graduate with a J.D./M.B.A. His younger sister, Kelsey, is the co-founder of Align Technology, the maker of Invisalign.

His mother, Wren, is the president of the Winslow Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds environmental causes. Wirth is an odd candidate for a puzzle maker. Now amid the coronavirus pandemic, Wirth is tapping into an increasingly receptive audience searching for screen-free, at-home activities to reconnect families and friends. As Liberty Puzzles grows, so does Wirth’s social messaging. Over the last 15-plus years, he has helped the company transform from a two-man outfit into one of the foremost puzzle makers in the country, using laser-cutting technology to create high-quality, modestly priced wooden jigsaws. Wirth, 53, started Liberty Puzzles with family friend Jeff Eldridge in Boulder in 2005.

“I said out loud, ‘You know I bet if I could make and sell these for $100, there’d be a market for them,’” he recalls. On a trip to Puerto Vallarta in 2003, that would change. The antique jigsaws would come out on family vacations but disappear in the hustle of everyday life. For years, he rarely touched the wooden edges of his mother’s prized Falls Puzzles, which were hand-cut during the 1930s.

Sign up today!Ĭhris Wirth’s puzzle-making journey may look familiar to those who have returned to puzzling during the pandemic. The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado.
