How to Finish Jigsaw Puzzles Faster

Locate a workspace large enough to hold all the puzzle pieces. If you don't have a table available, there are special mats designed to roll up puzzles and put them out of the way when you aren't working on them. Also locate enough flat surface area to turn over all the puzzle pieces preferably outside the border area.

Turn all the pieces over and lay them flat. Put like colors and patterns together as you go. Also sort out all the border pieces into a separate pile. If the puzzle has an intricate design, you may want to take the time now to further sort pieces by shape. This step may take quite a bit of time, but you can make finish faster if you organize the puzzle pieces now.

Put the border together. If you didn't find all the border pieces in Step 2, don't worry. Some edges are hard to find, but you can spot them later.

Begin putting like colors and patterns together. It's OK to look at the picture on the box as a reference point. Set the blocks of like colors and patterns into their proper place in the puzzle.

Put all the remaining pieces together to fill in the holes and finish the jigsaw puzzle. This may be the hardest part of the process. Sort the remaining pieces by shape if you didn't do that in Step 2.

Keep doing jigsaw puzzles. You do get faster as you get more experience doing them.