It turned out to be a Guinness-certified world-record holder for having the largest collection of jigsaw puzzles of varying genre, art forms, sources, shapes and sizes
Monleon is a 3-year-old boy who loves jigsaw puzzles.
Almost every morning, he wakes me up and asks me to join him and “play puzzle.” This has been my routine lately.
Credit should go to his mom who last July gave him his first jigsaw puzzle, a surefire pacifier and one of the world’s greatest inventions after the wheel. Next came more jigsaw puzzles.
In one of MonLeon’s brilliancies, he managed to put together a 40-or-so-pieces set within a few minutes without breaking a sweat. (Wow!)
Since then, he had cast aside all the Legos, plastic cars and trucks, fluffy balls and all other toys in his playroom, which we called Leon’s Den.
All jigsaws and nothing more.
That’s my boy, playful and creative!
Toddlers of his age come as rare as chicken’s teeth in our quiet neighborhood, a newly gentrified village of Gen. Trias City. “Tanders” (seniors) abound although it’s not a home for the aged.
So, one day I and my partner decided to find out how he would behave outside of his comfort zone.
On a sunny Sunday afternoon, after the seemingly ceaseless rain had stopped, we brought him to “the mansion that puzzles built,” a two-story house situated in a quaint barangay of Tagaytay City.
The road leading to the Puzzle Mansion was long and winding, with ups and downs, that made it look like a vast jigsaw puzzle in itself.
The short drive to some extent was as challenging as navigating a complex maze. If not for Waze, our efforts could have gone to waste.
Finally, we reached the Puzzle Mansion in all of its glory.
It turned out to be a Guinness-certified world-record holder for having the largest collection of jigsaw puzzles of varying genre, art forms, sources, shapes and sizes.
A signage proclaimed it was a hobbyist-resident of Tagaytay Georgina Gil-Lacuna who achieved that feat in November 2012.
The Mansion recently branched out into a bed-and-breakfast hotel on an adjacent lot.
It would appear that it already was assured of captive market, with all the hundreds of visitors and probably overnighters dropping by for a few hours.
We had a whistlestop visit to the Puzzle Mansion, and my kid was amused and amazed at the sight of countless jigsaw puzzles adorning every nook and cranny.
Lacuna’s first work featured a collage of Disney characters in a garage but a life-size portrait of Mona Lisa in jigsaws stood out among her priceless and varied collections.
We toured the mansion until MonLeon found a corner that was set aside for kids to try out their skills at solving puzzles.
There he sat down and started tinkering with his newfound toy.
Midway through, however, mansion personnel signaled it was closing time.
My kid was visibly disappointed; it took us (I and his mom) a lot of convincing that he should take a break as we promised to buy him barbecue, his favorite.
When we got home, he immediately looked for his beloved toys. Obviously, this kid couldn’t get enough of jigsaw puzzles.
(The author is a freelance journalist who writes about practically any topic under the sun and the moon.)