Puzzle Catalogue ...

showing the details and images of only about 20% of the Puzzle Museum collection.
Layout:  Column Grid
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Find Starts with Exact
Class
Sub-class
Year

You can search on multiple words and also exclude puzzles. Use the syntax

inclusion words - exclusion words

For example entering (without quotes) 'journet capsule' will give 12 puzzles, 'journet capsule - wood' will exclude puzzles with the word 'wood' from being displayed.

Details

Data

Associated Files

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Help

The catalogue can be searched by entering a search term (of 1 or more words), selecting a class, or both.

You may enter many search words with a space between. They will be combined with the logical AND. All words should be at least 2 characters long.

You may enter words to exclude. Puzzles containing those words will not be shown. Enter a dash (-) followed by the words to exclude. The dash should have a space before and after it.

You must have at least one word included before using the - to exclude puzzles.

Please note that some searches can return a large number of puzzles and may take many seconds to return the list.
Word

You can search for puzzles by using the start of a word, the exact word or the catalogue number.

The word must be a minimum of 3 characters and the possible search words will be displayed. If a word is not displayed then it is not in the index

The search term can many words and may contain alphanumeric characters only (no spaces, no punctuation and no additional wildcards).

Indexed fields are:

  • Puzzle objective
  • Theme/Advert
  • Name
  • Material
  • Year
  • Maker/Publisher
  • Designer/notes

For example searching for watch will find puzzles containing the words watch, watchchain, watches, watching, watchmakers

Class

When using this search all puzzles of that class and optional sub class will be shown. The dropdown boxes show valid options.

Year

You may enter year range to filter puzzles but this must be used in conjuntion with another search criteria. Default values are 0 to 2100.

If the year "from" is greater than the year "to", it is changed to be 1 less than the year to.

Neither value can be blank.

Explanatory note about the Puzzle Catalogue in 2020

Records started being kept in 1973 as "Item only" in hand written notebooks. From 1993 Records started being kept on computer. From 1999, with the acquisition of a digital camera, images were routinely added. The images size started very small, quickly changed to 400 pixels, and, as memory became cheaper, the image size has been increased over the years to 1600 pixels or over.

Only about 12,000 puzzles are currently in the main catalogue (about 20% of the whole collection). However in 2003 when the collection was in storage, bulk photographs were taken of most of the collection at that time. Though rather low resolution and with many puzzles stacked on top of others, the photos can be seen here. They give some idea of the size and breadth of the collection.


More of the earlier acquisitions are being digitised every year. However with no external funding and a maximum present-day staff of only two, the museum will never be able catch up with the photography and digital cataloguing of all the items, but we have made a start.


The Puzzle Classification, as explained elsewhere, underwent a significant improvement in 1999. Please make allowances for any inconsistencies that may have occurred when converting the old classification codes to the new ones.

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This puzzle catalogue has been tested at a horizontal window size of 1000 pixels or greater in the following web browsers