On Strategy and Tactic, part 2

In this article, we'll go through the most common strategy and tactic mistakes and provide practical training tips.

Common mistakes

(and why they are strategy or tactic mistakes)

From a strategy perspective, the most common causes of problems are choosing the wrong order of progression (for example, starting with too large a section or a difficult area) and chaotic space management (pieces spread out everywhere). Puzzles and tactics that go against one’s natural way of building also tend to cause difficulties. For example, if you're not used to using the reference image as a guideline, you most likely will struggle with highly detailed puzzles, unless you'll learn the pick-and-place tactic, where individual pieces are placed with the help of the reference image.

From a tactical perspective, the most common mistake is getting stuck on one section for too long. Or actually, this is more a moment where you're tacticless: you get stuck precisely when no tactic is guiding your actions. Assembly starts to flow once a suitable tactic is found, for instance, sorting pieces by shape or following a switching rule (when progress slows down for a certain amount of time, you must switch to another area).

Difficulties with sorting, in turn, often stem from trying to track too many things at once, or from choosing the wrong rule for sorting (for example, focusing on color when texture should be the priority). Sorting by shape also requires quite a few repetitions before it starts to flow effortlessly.

Tips for practicing strategy and tactics

In our opinion, the best way to practice strategy and tactics is to complete the same puzzle twice in a row: first intuitively, without much planning, and then according to a pre-decided strategy or tactic. The idea is that before the second attempt, you pause for a moment and reflect on how the first attempt went and how that particular puzzle would best be approached.

We recommend making only one strategic change at a time so that you can observe its effects. For example, on the second attempt you might decide not to start with the edge, but instead build the three most visually distinct details first as anchors. Or you might try placing the pieces you have gathered just outside the border near their intended location, instead of piling them inside the border and then having to move them out of the way of other pieces.

You can also practice tactics by assembling only one area instead of the whole puzzle. For example, if a gradient sky is difficult for you, you can focus only on that section and test whether sorting the pieces by shape or by shade of color helps, or whether brute forcing – which means systematically trying the pieces one by one in a specific spot – is the most effective tactic for you.

The effectiveness of a strategy or tactic can be measured, for example, by timing how long it takes to assemble different areas or by recording the assembly process and then paying attention to the points where progress slows down from the video. When analyzing video, however, you need to be able to distinguish whether the issue is strategic (choosing too large an area to assemble, workspace-management problems) or tactical (staying stuck too long, avoiding sorting by shape). Fortunately, this too gets easier with time and repetition.

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This article draws on the excellent Terminology Tuesday Instagram post series by Mari Black and Jim Eakins. Jim and Mari are pioneers of speed puzzling, both in developing and articulating the terminology and in advancing assembly techniques, and they are, for example, credited with developing the term sunbursting.