My Epic Fail

Somewhat regularly, I do something to prove I am an idiot.

On the first of December, I dumped the pieces of a 4700-piece jigsaw puzzle I inherited from my sister onto my dining room table.  My sister worked on the puzzle sporadically for something near a dozen years, but never entirely pieced it together.

I managed to glean the edge pieces and sort the other pieces into piles based on color.  Following that, (because I lack space for spreading out the entire array) I shoveled most of the piles into plastic bags for later processing one bag at a time. 

I next started piecing together the green edge pieces, the yellow pieces, and the orange pieces.  I alternated between assembling the edge and working on the other colors.

This is the point where we insert my idiocy.

Night before last, while working on yellow and orange, I tipped over a glass of red wine on the table.  A deep red tsunami surged though the puzzle pieces spread out before me.

Although I tried to clean up the mess as quickly as possible, hundreds of pieces almost instantly discolored into a mushy gray.  Half of them also swelled to three times the thickness of the normal pieces.

Yesterday, I swept the puzzle pieces back into the box for long-term storage.

Sorted Pieces

Soggy Pieces

—Mitchell Hegman