The World's Hardest Jigsaw Puzzle Contains Just 9 Pieces

If you wanted to while away a winter’s afternoon by challenging yourself to complete an extra-difficult jigsaw, your first choice would be to pick a giant one with lots of tiny pieces, right? And while you would be correct in assuming that the more the pieces, the longer a puzzle will take to finish, that doesn’t necessarily increase the difficulty.

As it happens, one of the hardest jigsaw puzzles in the world looks pretty simple on the surface: it’s fairly small, and consists of just nine pieces. But as YouTuber Chris Ramsay found when he attempted it, the “Ice 9” is a mind-boggling exercise in frustration.

Designed by Yuu Asaka, the Ice 9 comprises a small board and nine pieces consisting of an array of right angles and curved edges, many of which fit together in a number of combinations, much like a real life game of Tetris — but getting all nine to fit together on the board is quite the challenge.

Ramsay manages to fill in the board a number of times, but it always comes down to the ninth and final piece, which refuses to fit. “We’re always going to have a piece missing because of how these are angled,” he says.

Something which makes the Ice 9 even trickier is that the shape of the pieces mean it is impossible to completely fill the board: some small spaces will always be left, but as long as all nine pieces sit locked in place, that counts as a win.

After two hours and nine minutes, Ramsay finally solves the puzzle — but we won’t reveal how he did it here, just in case you feel like putting your brain through its paces with the Ice 9 at some point in the future. The way Ramsay sees it, it takes more than just logical thinking to complete a puzzle like this: “It’s about finding that one thing, and following your gut,” he says.

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