It befuddles this writer that puzzles — commonly used as a metaphor for cruel challenges of life — can have solvers hooked for hours. What’s so addictive about working out a crossword or a jigsaw? The craving for wildly intricate puzzles grew during the pandemic. While puzzlers studied offbeat themes and twists to keep them coming, bloggers wrote about probable ways of piecing them together. Around this time, Mumbai-bred artist Surabhi Banerjee was contemplating her subsequent steps as an illustrator. “I wanted to do something that went beyond our screens and deadlines. After browsing pieces that culminate into images of kittens in baskets and water lilies in ponds, I came across this puzzle with a picture of a couple. It helped me manage my anxiety and also taught me that in case of a garish jigsaw, the artwork gets in the way of the game’s meditative qualities,” she shares. And that inspired the adaptation of her illustrations into picture games.

The Attakatha puzzle