‘It’s fun putting them together’: Sherwood Park man completes 42,000-piece puzzle

A man from Sherwood Park, Alta., shows off a 42,000-piece puzzle that he put together, taking more than two years to complete.

Sherwood Park, Alta., resident Rick O’Donnell has completed a 42,000-piece puzzle, mostly while watching the Oilers.

“I’ve done it since I was a little guy,” O’Donnell told CTV News Edmonton. “We always did puzzles at Christmas and I loved doing them. Over the years I kept on doing it.”

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The 42,000-piece puzzle titled “Around the World” features landmarks from across the globe, including the Great Sphinx of Giza, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. The same puzzle is hanging up at the Panama City Airport, said O’Donnell, adding that he wants to do something similar.

“A school or a library would be really cool to have it put up there,” he said.

It took O’Donnell about two and a half years or over 800 hours to finish the mega puzzle. He did the puzzle in sections on his ping pong table while watching his favourite hockey team. The next largest puzzle he completed was 18,000 pieces.

He said the hardest part of building the puzzle was searching through thousands of pieces.

“It’s fun putting them together, it’s not fun sorting them out,” he added.

According to Guinness World Records, the world’s largest puzzle had 551,232 pieces and was assembled by 1,600 university students in Vietnam in 2011.

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With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Galen McDougall