Pinay Puzzle Queen

Do you have enough patience to put together 24,000 puzzle pieces?

Well, one Filipina does. She’s Gemberly Tan-Cagalingan, and not only is she the first in the Philippines to complete the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, “Life: The Greatest Challenge”, she is also the first to do so in Asia! Astig!

Pinay Puzzle Queen Gemberly and her completed “Life” puzzle

Gemberly’s a certified jigsaw puzzle addict, having started to assemble puzzles when she was only 11 years old (she’s still young at 26 now), and she has done more than 200 boxes already, with each puzzle having about 500 to 3,000 pieces. (ohmy, that’s patience to the nth level! hehe!)

Initially, she has doubts on whether she could finish this super huge Life puzzle, but she jumped on in, and triumphed. Her thinking: “She might be doing the world’s largest puzzle only once in her life, and she’s got to try it while she’s young!”

And so, in January 5 (of this year), she opened the box that would make her the official Philippine puzzle queen. Then the next day, she started “working”. Overall, it took her 233 hours and five minutes to finish the whole puzzle (that’s from January 6 to April 28!). She even recorded it, and has two videos to boot:

And yes, she’s even made it to Philippine television via The Probe team!

Now, Gemberly is looking forward to getting her hands on a much larger puzzle, and, having been recently married, is looking forward to having a baby of her own. Aww, sweet.

* The “Life” puzzle gemberly assembled is by Royce Mcclure. It is an official entry to the Guinness World Record. TheFilipinoWeb would like to thank Ms. Gemberly Tan-Cagalingan for this interview (including the photo and videos).

Comments

8 Responses to “Pinay Puzzle Queen”

donG hO on July 23rd, 2008 12:09 pm

wow! amazing! i also love puzzles but not as big as that.
entrepgirl on July 23rd, 2008 2:03 pm

oh wow! this is so cool. it takes the greatest patience and perseverance to accomplish this. i say congrats to Ms. Gemberly for this amazing feat! i used to do 1,000 pcs puzzles before but that was years ago. now, even if i wanted to do some, coz i still have a couple of undone boxes, i don’t have the luxury of time anymore for me to complete them. Congrats again!
McClure on July 23rd, 2008 7:45 pm

Gemberly, it has been fun corresponding with you and seeing your accomplishment getting recognition on the web, print and TV.

Your certificate will be mailed shortly.

I bet one of the first toys for your ‘baby to be’ will be a wooden jigsaw puzzle, so he/she an follow in mama’s footsteps ! (Tree Toys in Australia have some of Royce’s art in the tray type with the pins/handles on the individual cut-outs shapes!) Congratulations!
McClure on July 23rd, 2008 7:47 pm

note: visitors can read about others who have completed this 24,000 piece puzzle…perhaps they could be first for their country, state or town?!

http://www.worldslargestpuzzle.com
admin on July 24th, 2008 7:57 am

Sir McClure, your puzzle is really beautifully crafted. Congratulations to you too, for making it to the Guinness.
Treasures By Brenda on September 13th, 2008 5:24 pm

Quite an accomplishment for a young lady. I wish her well with the puzzle of life!

To read more about Ms. Tan-Cagalingan, you might be interested in reading http://www.squidoo.com/jigsawpuzzles2 which includes human-interest stories about puzzling and http://www.squidoo.com/jigsawpuzzles3 which includes more information and great sources of jigsaw puzzles.

Brenda
Recent URLs tagged Puzzle - Urlrecorder on October 18th, 2008 12:24 am

[...] Recent public urls tagged “puzzle” → Pinay Puzzle Queen [...]
Jigsaw Puzzles on November 11th, 2008 4:55 pm

You just can’t beat those old vintage jigsaw puzzles, you should give http://www.jspuzzles.com a look, i’m an addict