Happy Daylight Savings! I completely forgot about daylight savings and thought I was waking up at 7:30 this morning with plenty of time before the video went up...well, I was actually getting up at 8:30. But luckily I didn't miss it!
Anyway, today's video is all about the strange bright pink edition of the vintage Moonshot puzzle and trying to work out how it came about:
Y...
2024-03-10 16:06:06 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been promising this video all year, but I just kept finding new puzzles that I wanted to feature. So I delayed it a little, but it's here now! This is such an incredible puzzle haul, and I hope you like seeing all of these vintage puzzles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo0-MxjTVAE
And as I said in the video, I have one more box to open, which is filled with some of the most beautiful p...
2024-02-29 17:02:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone and Happy Friday! So usually the OC Speed Puzzling competitions only happen every other month, but since one was postponed last fall because of the weather, we had one in both January and February this time. This was a pairs competition and I was paired up with Darya, going up against Yvonne and Lindsay. (And technically Tammy - watch until the end!)
In terms of main...
2024-02-23 16:49:54 +0000 UTC View Post
I went to the biggest jigsaw puzzle competition for the second year in a row and...we did pretty well :) This video was a lot to put together, but I'm so happy that I hired a cameraperson this year to get such great puzzling footage:
And then I also put together an exclusive video just for Patreon about all of the practice puzzles I did surrounding Winter Carnival. First are a f...
2024-02-18 17:01:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Yesterday I had the most puzzle-y day, with two online contests, plus some thumbnail work and a puzzle with an interesting box. So I decided to vlog the whole day, which you can watch here:
One note - at about 5 minutes in when I say I'm familiar with the picture, I meant to say I'm familiar with the piece shape. I did another Buffalo puzzle as practice recently but n...
2024-02-11 21:18:17 +0000 UTC View Post
If your favorite kind of videos from me are the ones that get more and more unhinged as the video goes on, then today is your lucky day. I'm solving the Magic Mirror puzzle released by Springbok in 1972...and you just have to watch:
Assuming I can escape the predicament I find myself in at the end of the video, here is what is coming up next:
-A giant haul of some of my to...
2024-02-11 17:07:35 +0000 UTC View Post
This may be a little controversial, but this year I decided to make my 2023 wrap-up video a Patreon exclusive, and I talk why about in the video. But don't worry, even if I didn't re-design all of the charts to make them extra pretty, there is still a ton of data in here:
A few notes:
-I fully overthought this and decided to blur out most of my rating...
2024-02-02 17:55:28 +0000 UTC View Post
As promised, here is my vlog from the Orange County Pairs Competition. I paired up with Yvonne and...we did pretty well. There's also some team practice for Nationals and a small puzzle haul in the video:
There is another pairs event in February where I'll be working with Darya, so stay tuned to see how that one goes!
If you want to try the Ravensburger or Cobble Hill puzzles th...
2024-01-21 17:13:27 +0000 UTC View Post
This video was a beast to put together, but I finally finished it! Watch me solve the 5000 Piece Pokemon puzzle here:
I loved this puzzle and I definitely think I'm going to do it again off-camera one day. Plus, now even if I don't have a chance to do another giant puzzle this year, I can still point to this video. I have so much travel coming up that I'm really not sure if I'll be ab...
2024-01-19 17:08:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everybody. I feel like the New Year is always a bit of a slow ramp up back into my filming routine, but even though I haven't finished a main channel video yet, I'm back with a puzzle vlog for all of you. In this one, I cover some practice I did for the Winter Carnival contest, some behind the scenes of my next main channel video, and an online speed puzzle contest:
I need to...
2024-01-09 23:09:01 +0000 UTC View Post
First up, happy birthday to me! I'm writing this in advance, but New Years Eve, the day that I'm scheduling this to post, is my birthday!
But I didn't want to leave you without a puzzle this Sunday, so I'm pulling out another long solve from the archives. This is the puzzle that I spray painted on the back of a Cloudberries puzzle ages ago. You can see the DIY video of how I did it here:
2023-12-31 14:44:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everybody! I hope you're all having a great holiday. I'm writing this in advance so that you still get a little puzzle content over my Christmas break. So to be honest, I kind of forgot that I still have a bunch of long time lapses to share. I made these in the early days of my channel, but they didn't get a lot of views, so as I started transitioning to more vlog-style puzzle solves, I deleted these long solves completely and planned to share all of them here on Patreon.
So what ...
2023-12-24 17:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
We made it to the end of the year! I published a lot of videos this year, and this is the very last one. For my annual Karen Puzzles Holiday Special, I solved a 3D Christmas Tree Puzzle from 1997! And just like the thumbnail says, everything went wrong:
Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to put together any bonus videos this week. I'm already feeling so ready for vacation that it wa...
2023-12-17 17:04:54 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been collecting footage for this video for months, and now it's finally here - your ultimate guide for how to play Puzzle Chess. I love how you don't need to buy anything new for this - all you need is a puzzle and a free chess clock app. Learn how to play and see all kinds of variations in my new video here:
I'll be totally honest, one of the reasons why it took me so long...
2023-12-10 17:02:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Today's video is one for the truly dedicated puzzle girlies (and all other gender expressions). After editing all of the World's videos, I wanted an excuse to just sit down and do a whole lot of puzzling. So I decided to finally solve six puzzles that have been sitting on my to-do shelf for years. Some because they just looked too hard and some because I wanted to share them but couldn't dedicate an entire video to them. Plus at the end I do a bonus puzzle haul of all the new puzzles that are...
2023-12-03 19:40:06 +0000 UTC View Post
As promised, here is my vlog about the puzzle competition I went to over the weekend - the Orange County Speed Puzzlers Teams Competition! I went into it thinking this would just be for fun since I had never met half of my team before and we were going up against the Golden State Puzzlers. But then...there was a bit of an upset:
You might also have seen some of these clips onlin...
2023-11-22 21:14:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello Patreon! Today I have two videos for you - the first is a look into a vintage treasure hunt puzzle from 1985. I really think this one is solvable, so if you click through to the YouTube video description, you can download a high quality image of the puzzle and see if you can solve it:
And then I also filmed a vlog of some of the puzzling I've been doing over the past week....
2023-11-19 17:02:58 +0000 UTC View Post
As promised, here is my recap video about the California championships! This was along the same lines as the Connecticut event I went to a few months ago, only this time I was competing for real since I live in California:
A huge shoutout to Jonathan from speedpuzzling.com for running these in-person regional events and running so many online events. The website is a little tricky to ...
2023-11-16 21:31:24 +0000 UTC View Post
I cannot believe this video series is finally done. I've been working on it nonstop for the last 5 weeks and now the final video is up. I really hope you guys like it:
So, a little secret is that I might make one more video from that trip. I have a bunch of footage from my trip to the Spanish puzzle stores, our team practice session, and other random things that got cut out of the mai...
2023-11-12 18:39:58 +0000 UTC View Post
It's finally here! I've been promising this for a while and I finally sat down and made it - my travel vlog of everything we did in Madrid outside of the puzzle competition. It's over an hour long, so settle in and work on a puzzle while you watch. (This is a great one to watch at 2x speed - that's what I did when I was reviewing it 😅)
Unfortunately I didn't get the Finals vi...
2023-10-29 15:15:07 +0000 UTC View Post
In a couple of weeks, I'm going up to the Bay Area for the California State Championships, and my new team got together to practice yesterday. Aly can't make it, so I'll be temporarily joining the Golden State Puzzlers (except we're going by the name War and Piece).
So Tammy, Yvonne, Linsday and I got together for a few hours to do three 1000 piece puzzles as practice to get to know each other's puzzling styles. You can watch the video above or here:
I have been working literally nonstop (I was up until midnight last night uploading it), but it's finally here - my Worlds video about all of the semifinal rounds. This one is the longest of the bunch, because there were 7 rounds in total to get through. I hope you guys like it and I hope you watch to the end to see our Teams round, because it was pretty special:
Next week's vid...
2023-10-22 16:12:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Finally, after nonstop editing, my first recap video is up! Deciding to split out the semifinals into another video was definitely the right decision - just getting this much finished really took everything out of me. I hope you like it:
I feel so much lighter already today. I spent an hour before the video published cleaning my apartment because I definitely neglected all of my chore...
2023-10-15 16:11:36 +0000 UTC View Post
I just put up a bonus Thursday video - think of this like an appetizer before my official Worlds recaps start up. The day before the competition, I raced Alejandro and Kristin at 100-piece puzzles, and well, you can probably guess the results:
I'm hard at work on the recap videos, and I actually just made the executive decision about five minutes ago that I'm going to split them up in...
2023-10-12 21:47:01 +0000 UTC View PostHello Patreon! Since I was out of town for Worlds for the past two weeks, I don't have a new video today, but I thought I'd let you all know what's going on and what to expect.
First off, I am not a good traveller, so even though I got home on Wednesday, I spent the next three nights falling asleep at 7pm and waking up at 3am. Today is the first day that I got a normal night's sleep and am finally feeling like myself again.
There is so much Worlds footage to go through that I just...
2023-10-01 17:23:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello from the week before I leave for Worlds! I'm sure I'm going to be so busy while I'm there, so I decided to pre-film today's video and pre-write today's post. The me that's writing this post has no idea how I did at Worlds, but by the time it goes up, all of you who are watching the livestream will know whether or not I am the puzzle world champion (spoiler alert: I definitely won't be).
Anyway, for today's video I wanted to share the full story of how I got my hands on the super-r...
2023-09-24 16:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
I wasn't sure if I'd get a video out this week, because as this is publishing, I am in Spain taking in Madrid before heading up to Worlds! I am pre-writing this before I leave, so if you want more up-to-date info about my Spanish adventures, my Instagram Story is the place to get that.
In the meantime, I filmed a ton of time lapses while practicing for Worlds in the week before I left, and I edited them together into a casual video sharing my thoughts on each puzzle. You can check it ou...
2023-09-17 16:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everybody, I have been nonstop prepping for Worlds. You don't even know how much speed puzzling practice I've been doing (and filming all of it - look for a video soon). So in order to make time for that, I wanted to do a relatively simple video this week. So it is another puzzle haul, with tons of vintage puzzles including one pretty old GIANT puzzle. You can check it out above or here:
https://youtu.be/SKFLEpiWMnU...
2023-09-10 16:06:14 +0000 UTC View Post
As you saw in my old outro last week, I had a lot more I wanted to say about Worlds, and as I kept thinking about it, there was way too much to fit into one video. So I made a follow-up all about the weird and specific things I'm doing to prepare for Worlds. Some of the info is specific to this competition, but I think a lot of it can be applied to any puzzle contests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEMzV82...
2023-09-03 16:14:03 +0000 UTC View Post
At long last, I finished editing the Puzzle Camp recap video! I included clips from it in some of my recent videos, but this video is the entire weekend start to finish. It isn't quite as polished as most of my videos, but it's mostly for all of us who were there to remember what we all got up to all weekend.
Since this was a private weekend, I didn't want to post this fully publicly to my main channel. Originally this was going to be a regular Patreon video, but everyone who was in it ...
2023-09-01 19:15:31 +0000 UTC View Post