Jigsaw Puzzles Are Piece of Cake for Irvine Woman

There are people who can watch television and piece together a jigsaw puzzle at the same time.

Karen Crellin, 31, of Irvine is one of those talented people and she’s so good she competes in the annual American Publishing National Jigsaw Puzzle Championship at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

“It’s just something I can do,” said Crellin, who can do a 500-piece puzzle in two or three hours. She has about 100 puzzles that she has completed stored in a closet. “I’m always looking for new ones to make. I never do the same one again.”

Most times, she has a jigsaw puzzle working and prefers piecing together ones that show objects rather than landscapes. And she prefers working square or rectangular puzzles to round ones.

And unlike many jigsaw puzzle makers who first form the border, “I work on areas that seem to fit with each other and everything else just falls in place,” Crellin said. “Separating the pieces to work on the border wastes time.”

But as good as she is, “Really good people show up every year for the championship and they are really fast. You can hardly beat them,” said Crellin, whose best finish was 15th in the doubles competition.

At that time the singles winner was a 14-year-old girl who pieced the puzzle together in 1 hour and 40 minutes and got the $2,000 first prize. There were an estimated 800 entrants at the event held in the Ohio University basketball arena.

The rules are simple. The first 15 finishers in the preliminary competition move on to the finals. The first to complete the puzzle and yell “jigsaw” is the winner.

Crellin said she entered the doubles competition with her cousin Jill Holtzapple, who lives in Ohio where they were both raised and worked puzzles together.

It took them 1 hour, 39 minutes and 9 seconds to complete the 1,000-piece puzzle of a series of umbrella tops and that earned them 15th place. They competed against a field of 180 who had to complete the same puzzle.

Crellin, a public accountant, is currently trying to find time for some serious training for the 1989 championship. “We try to do as many as we can before the contest,” she said. “We train like anyone else who competes in anything.”

But a family addition has curtailed her training. “Babies take a lot of time,” she said, noting she just gave birth to her first child, Jonathan, and is taking a break from serious jigsaw puzzle work.

Competing in the championship “is something different to do. Most people haven’t even heard of it,” she said. “It’s not a big thing out here.”

The jigsaw competition is held each August but was canceled for 1988. She said piecing together jigsaw puzzles was a family activity during her youth.

It was quite a family gathering at the Peck home in Costa Mesa where they were planning the 90th birthday celebration on Friday (July 22) of James Van Olden Peck Sr.

Among those present were James Van Olden Peck Jr.

And James Van Olden Peck III.

And James Van Olden Peck IV.

Joseph P. Ersek calls himself an old farmer and has gotten a lot of awards and commendations over the years, including a recent honor from the Orange County Farm Bureau for his 50 years of work there.

Ersek also lists another accomplishment. He has 33 years of perfect attendance with the Anaheim Rotary Club.

Her senior citizen buddies thought it would be a good idea if Nina Lolmaugh took a ride in an old car from her Costa Mesa home to the nearby Rea Community Center, where they would throw a 100th birthday party for her.

So on July 13, the day she was born in 1888, a 1919 Model T Ford, driven by owner Bill Hamilton, pulled up to take her to the party.

“We had a good time watching him,” said Merle Hatleberg who was in charge of the party. “Sometimes Hamilton forgets it’s not a modern car and shuts it off. It was fun seeing him crank it up to start it again.”