TIS A PUZZLEMENT

 

 

TIS A PUZZLEMENT

 

Isolated and desperate for a new hobby, pastime or diversion in the face of social distancing measures implemented to fight Covid-19, mobs of violently bored citizens have begun looting puzzle stores across the country. This new phenomenon was confirmed yesterday by government officials.

People are grabbing up jigsaw, crossword, sudoku puzzle; even climbing over each other to get Rubik’s Cubes. Stores have had their windows smashed and entire inventories seized by panicked Americans who are stuck at home and in dire need of suitable diversions.

Store owner, Orville Romeoville, was interviewed by the press. He stated, “Probably did ten thousand dollars’ worth of damage to my establishment: ‘Orville’s, the Place to Amuse’. I watched someone punch an old lady just to get her hands on a book of riddles! I’ve always said that there’s a real ugly side of humanity that comes out when people are faced with a limited supply of five-hundred-piece landscape scenes, decide to turn on each other.”

Marichal and Mitchell Augustina are avid puzzle buffs. Between them they had solved over five-thousand puzzles, since they were married. Now during this crisis, they badly needed new ones. They ventured out to Orville’s. They had to go there. There was no other puzzle store in town. When they got there, the shelves were bare. Orville was on the floor crying. “Oh well, said Marichal, we’ll just have to redo the old puzzles. Starting over might be fun.”

At press time, reports indicated that on-line scammers were offering one-thousand-piece puzzles for five-hundred dollars each – plus shipping and handling.

The Augustinas wouldn’t ever consider it. Anyway, they owned every cat-sleeping-on-bookshelf puzzle ever produced, including one of a Siamese in a bookshelf in Albert Einstein’s study!