The Racing Puzzlers

This story was written to the following theme:

"The season of renewal had only just begun, but against all odds it had brought a sliver of hope with it."

********************************************************************
The staffroom at the University library was spacious and accommodating. It was where most members of the library staff, of all grades, took their meal and refreshment breaks and could chat with each other when off duty. It had all the usual facilities, such as fridges, microwave ovens, a water heater, a sink, and cupboards for storing the staff members’ coffee mugs. It also had plenty of seating and several large tables.

It had become customary for one of the tables to be set aside for a jigsaw puzzle. This was nearly always a massive 5,000 piece puzzle that needed a large surface – the sort that was not usually available in an average home for the length of time it would take to complete the puzzle. That was why staff members often brought in puzzles that had started off as well-meant Christmas presents but which were better suited for communal solving in the staffroom.

These puzzles were usually the sort that took a great deal of work. Not only were they enormous, but they included huge areas of sky or sea in which it was impossible to find features that helped one to match likely looking pieces to their neighbours. If you managed to fit just one piece during a coffee break you left feeling deeply satisfied.

Then came the day when two such puzzles turned up together. It must have been early in January, when the “what do I do with this” Christmas present crisis was at its height. They were both in the 5,000 piece category, and the pictures looked to be of similar difficulty.

One was a scene that consisted largely of trees bursting into leaf in Spring – masses of tree branches and tiny green leaves, topped with a cloudless evenly-coloured blue sky. It had the title “The Season of Renewal”.

The second puzzle was based on a Victorian painting of a shipwreck. A vessel had gone aground on rocks on one side of the picture, and on the other side there was a distant lighthouse and a small rowing boat that was heading towards the wreck with two people rowing through the raging sea. The bulk of the scene was that selfsame raging sea, all dark colours with lots of white crests, beneath a storm-tossed sky. It was almost certainly a depiction of Grace Darling and her father on their way to save the passengers and crew of the Forfarshire in 1838, and the artist had given it the title “A Sliver of Hope”.

The question was clearly, “which puzzle do we do first?” and then somebody came up with the bright idea of doing both of them at the same time, using tables at opposite ends of the staffroom. A further bright idea was to make a race out of it, with two teams pitted against each other.

As things turned out, the teams were based on the departments that the library staff worked in, with a general division between front-of-house and backroom staff. However, due to the fact that many staff members fulfilled both functions during the working day, this was by no means fixed and people tended to align themselves to the team that contained more of their close friends than the other. The numbers on each team were kept as equal as possible to make the challenge fair.

Team lists were drawn up, and only then was a coin tossed to decide which team would do which puzzle. There had to be a prize for winning the challenge, and it was settled that the losing team would take over the slots of the winning team on the tea-towel rota for the whole of the following term.

And so the race began!

At first everything was absolutely fine, with each team assiduously turning over all the pieces and finding those with straight edges for the frame. Naturally, people kept a weather eye on how the other team was progressing and noting if they appeared to be doing better or worse.

All would have been well if the spirit of professionalism had been maintained throughout the exercise, but unfortunately this was not the case. The opportunity to cheat was always going to be there, and some of the competitors found it hard to resist temptation.

It began with people stealing a few extra minutes in the staffroom, using the excuse, when arriving late back at their workstation, that they had been waylaid by a student who needed their help. It soon became noted, however, that student waylaying of staff when returning from their breaks had increased by approximately 250% in the time since the jigsaw competition had begun.

People then got sneaky and found that their travels around the library in the course of their work seemed to take them past the staffroom more often than not, and a quick minute on the puzzle could always be fitted in without anyone noticing.

However, as time went by it occurred to a few of them that the odd minute grabbed in this way could be spent more productively in direct sabotage of the other team’s puzzle rather than in hoping to find a piece that fitted in one’s own. The sabotage usually consisted in pieces that had already been fitted being unfitted, or of pieces being mysteriously knocked off the table and finding themselves wedged under a rug or a chair leg. This had to be subtle – just the odd piece every now and then – so as not to excite suspicion.

The cheating was relatively minor until the day when somebody had the not-so-bright idea of opening a book on the outcome and taking bets. The stakes were strictly limited, but it did mean that winners might expect to pocket around 20p – which was not to be sniffed at.

With the money incentive added to the mix, schemes for nobbling the opposition, and for guarding against being nobbled, reached what amounted to fever pitch in the environs of a University library.

The building attendants, whose job was to supervise students as they entered and left the library, and who patrolled the place to check that all the students were behaving as they should, found themselves being asked to report back on any unusual movements on the part of suspect library staff. The attendants could view virtually the whole library – but not the staffroom itself - via a system of CCTV cameras that relayed their pictures to a bank of small screens in the front-of-house area. These screens were now avidly watched by jigsaw team members, a number of whom had volunteered to do extra duties in this area for that sole purpose.

But things went too far on the day that a member of the cleaning staff, who was at work in the staffroom with only one other staff member present, was asked by that staff member to clean a mark on the floor underneath the table on which The Season of Renewal was progressing very nicely, unlike “A Sliver of Hope” which was presenting considerable problems with the raging sea section. For that reason, more neutrals were backing “Renewal” than “Hope”.

“You’ll have to lift one leg of the table to get at it properly”, said staff member X, who just happened to belong to the “Hope” team. The leg was duly lifted and a whole corner of the puzzle fell on to the floor.

“Oh no”, said staff member X, “Look what you’ve done. You’ve ruined the jigsaw!”

The cleaner was mortified and full of apologies. “I’m so sorry”, she said, “but don’t worry, most of it fell in one piece so it shouldn’t be too difficult to put it back where it came from”.

“I’ll help you”, said staff member X, diving to the floor to grab as much of the fallen section as he could. For reasons that were perfectly obvious to anyone who knew where staff member X’s allegiance lay, and who was also aware that he had placed a full 10p bet on “A Sliver of Hope”, the largest pieces that were still joined together were nothing like as closely acquainted with each other when he placed them back on the table, nowhere near where they had come from.

When the “accident” was reported to the team captains they decided that it would only be fair for the Renewal team to be allowed to restore their jigsaw before the competition continued. Staff member X was not too happy about this decision, but he reckoned that making his objection public might not be in his best interest, especially if anyone cared to track his movements at the time the disaster occurred.

However, the incident did have the effect of denting the morale of the Renewers while boosting that of the Hopers. Even though repairs to The Season of Renewal had only just begun, against all odds it had brought a sliver of hope with it to the “Sliver of Hope” team and their financial backers.

Indeed, the point was soon reached when both jigsaws were within fifty pieces of completion. Given all the shenanigans that everyone knew about but pretended not to know, a decision was made to end the competition in a sprit of friendship. All betting was cancelled and the stake money returned to the punters. There would be a time set aside for a final race to the line, both teams working at the same time and the winner declared by a neutral judge. To make life easier for everyone, only four members of each team would take part.

So that is what happened. The flag went down and the puzzlers went to work, each desperately trying not to get in each others’ way. The idea was that a hand would be raised when the final piece was pressed home and the judge would make sure that everything was above board.

What nobody expected was a dead heat, but that is exactly what happened. A Renewal hand shot up at precisely the same time as a Hope hand and the result was declared to be a draw, with the tea-towel rota staying as it was.

It was also decided that, in future, the staffroom would only play host to one giant jigsaw puzzle at a time!

©John Welford