Puzzle Season

The Season Begins

Across the world, competitors trained for this. Rivalries formed. Championships were won.

Zilker didn’t care about any of that.

He wasn’t a puzzler. He wasn’t even that good at jigsaw puzzles. But when his parents signed him up for the National Speed-Puzzling Championship, he shrugged and went along with it.

“You used to love puzzles when you were little!” his mom said.

He did. Puzzles used to mean quiet Saturday mornings, fitting pieces together at the kitchen table. His dad always let him place the last piece, the one that made the picture whole.

So now here he was, wondering why he had agreed to this.

Across from him sat Vail, the reigning champion. Sharp, cold, and fast. “Try to keep up,” Vail muttered as the timer counted down.

Zilker gulped.

He faced a thousand pieces and knew he was going to lose.

3… 2… 1… GO.

The Puzzle That Broke Him

The competition hall was a blur of flying hands and clicking pieces.

Zilker tried to keep up. He picked up a single blue-sky piece. It was just cardboard and ink, but in his hand it felt like a stone. The curve on its edge swam before his eyes. For a moment, the entire puzzle became this one impossible piece. Where did it go? Vail’s hands flew across the board, snapping pieces into place with perfect precision.

Zilker’s fingers fumbled. He placed the piece down. Wrong fit. He flipped it over. Still wrong.

By the time Vail slammed his hands down (puzzle complete), Zilker had barely finished a corner. He glanced down at his half-done puzzle.

The crowd cheered for the winners. Zilker just wanted to disappear.

The Ad That Changed Everything

For the rest of the summer, Zilker refused to touch a puzzle. He shoved the box his mom left on his desk into the back of his closet. At the bookstore, he avoided the puzzle aisle entirely. He wasn’t good at it. He wasn’t meant to be good at it.

Then, one day, at a small bookstore, a flyer caught his eye. Pinned to the community board.

PUZZLERS WANTED!

Have you ever wondered what makes a puzzle… a puzzle?

Looking for a different way to see?

Call 555-PZLR

He wrote down the number.

That evening, he picked up the phone.

It rang.

“You found the flyer.”

Zilker hesitated. “Uh… yeah.”

“Then you are ready. Flip it over.”

Click.

Zilker slowly turned the flyer. On the back was a maze. No words. No address. Just a winding puzzle of paths leading in many directions.

He got a pencil and started tracing his way through. One dead end, then another, then another. Finally, after several tries, he found the right path. And at the end of the maze, written so small he had to squint: 2020 Emergence St.

He hopped on his bike and rode there.

Welcome to Puzzle Hall

Puzzle Hall was hidden in an old warehouse that no one seemed to notice. The windows were dusty, the door unmarked.

Inside, two puzzlers were already training. The room smelled like cardboard and concentration. Nehalem worked through multiple puzzles at once on a conveyor belt, pieces sliding together with mechanical rhythm. Every time he finished one, candy dropped down as a reward. Chehelem worked on bizarre puzzles in complete silence.

Zilker stood there, stunned. “How can they be so good?”

The Master Puzzler folded his hands. “What do you think they’re doing?”

Zilker studied them more carefully. Nehalem sorted pieces that had no edges, snapping them into place. Chehelem completed puzzles that had no picture.

“They’re not solving puzzles,” Zilker said quietly. “They’re making them.”

The Struggle

The training was nothing like Zilker expected.

No puzzles to solve. Just pieces with curves that bent wrong. Edges that turned where they shouldn’t. A corner piece with five sides.

Weeks turned into months. Zilker tried forcing them together. He flipped them, rotated them, examined them until his eyes hurt. Nothing fit.

Nehalem’s candy kept falling. Chehelem never stopped.

But his pile of misfits only grew.

The Breakthrough

Late one night, frustrated, Zilker picked up the five-sided corner piece. He’d tried every angle. It didn’t fit anywhere.

Then he stopped trying to fit it.

He just sat with it. Waited.

The edges transformed.

He placed it down.

It fit.

His heart raced. He ran to the Master Puzzler, holding up the piece. “I did something!”

The old man nodded. “Most puzzlers solve what’s in front of them,” the Master said. “The best ones solve what isn’t.”

The Rematch

Zilker returned to the World Speed-Puzzling Championship.

Vail smirked. “Back for another loss?”

They faced the final puzzle. The hardest one yet.

The timer started. Go.

Vail worked with mechanical precision, sliding pieces into position one after another. He never paused, never questioned. Every piece had its place, and he knew exactly where.

Zilker hesitated.