Jigsaw puzzles
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Ravensburger Nature morte vintage
500 pieces
Man named Swiss Puzzle Champion at his first ever jigsaw competition
14.10.2026
Translation: Katherine Martin
Manuel Egli’s first jigsaw competition ended with him being crowned Swiss Puzzle Champion. In this interview, he explains how he completed a 500-piece puzzle in 38:10 minutes – and describes the brief moment when he thought he’d lost the title.
Manuel Egli still has five pieces left to go when the audience starts applauding one of his fellow competitors. He knows that his fellow contestant, like him, is on the verge of finishing a jigsaw puzzle in record time. «At that point, I thought I’d missed out on the Swiss Championship title because of those five pieces,» he tells me in our interview, describing the nerve-wracking final minutes of the competition.
Source: Ravensburger
Egli, who hails from Diessbach, Bern, had made it to the finals of the Swiss Puzzle Championship in Winterthur. As a result, he’d managed to go way beyond his originally modest ambition of finishing in the top ten.
40,320 puzzle pieces in the living room
Egli has been doing puzzles since he was a child. In our interview, he says he thinks he did his first at three years old. «Getting a new puzzle as a gift was always great. I could hardly wait to get started on it.» As time went on, the puzzles got bigger and bigger. This culminated in a 40,320-piece jigsaw that took up his parents’ entire living room. Even as a child, he’d race against the clock to complete puzzles. Though, back then, it was just for fun. He wanted to beat his own records.
Source: Ravensburger
It wasn’t until a conversation with his parents in the spring of 2026 that he heard about the Swiss Championship. With the competition in mind, Egli grabbed a 500-piece puzzle he’d done as a child and started piecing it together. His first attempt took him roughly 45 to 50 minutes. After comparing his time to previous championship results, he was confident he’d be able to compete. So he signed up.
You can’t use the same method for every puzzle
In preparing for his race against the clock, Egli tried various 500-piece puzzles to see which strategy would work best for him. Sometimes, he started off by picking out the edge pieces. Other times, he made piles of matching pieces. He did some puzzles several times in order to compare his approaches. The strategy that worked best depended on the image at hand.
His training materials also included puzzles featuring this year’s World Cup, as well as the jigsaw used in the 2025 Swiss Puzzle Championship. This allowed him to compare his times with recent competition results. «I still thought that doing puzzles at home would probably be much easier than doing it under the pressure of a competition,» says Egli.
Egli was the fastest Swiss competitor in his qualifying group. With that, his ambition of achieving a top-ten position turned into hopes of a spot on the podium.
Stuck on the hills
In the final, Egli had a «Swiss Cows» puzzle in store for him. Everyone competing in this round was given the same 500-piece puzzle. The design was kept secret until the timer started, meaning Egli saw it for the very first time during the competition itself. He kicked things off by turning the pieces over, setting aside the edges as he went. Then he put together the border and the blue sky. The sky was only made up of a few pieces, and they were markedly different from the rest.
Once Egli got to the hills, his progress stalled. He made a few attempts at piecing them together, only to realise he wasn’t really getting anywhere. «I moved on to putting together the two cows, which gave me a really good structure.» After that, he was back on track.
He recommends would-be pro puzzlers switch things up like this too. If you get stuck on one aspect of a jigsaw or zero in on finding a specific piece, you’ll waste time. So when he gets stuck, he does something like separate pieces by colour. The piece he’s looking for often unexpectedly turns up in the process.
Applause for a Spanish contestant
With about 20 pieces left to go, Egli realised how close he was to winning the title. This amped up his nervousness, making him slightly slower. Then, applause broke out at the other table.
What Egli didn’t know at that moment was that the competitor who’d finished just ahead of him was Spaniard Alejandro Clemente León, the former World Individual Champion. The overall rankings include the times of all participants. For the Swiss championship title, however, a separate ranking is done for Swiss citizens. In other words, León wasn’t in the running for the Swiss title.
With a time of 38 minutes and ten seconds, Egli won the national championship. In the overall ranking, he took third place. León, who finished five seconds faster, came in second place. Maja von Borstel, from Germany, took the overall victory with a time of 35 minutes and seven seconds.
When Egli heard people clapping at the other table, he thought the Swiss title had been decided. It wasn’t until someone at the table congratulated him on winning the Swiss Championship that he realised the person who’d beaten him wasn’t actually competing for the national title. «When I heard that, I felt relieved – and really happy about the win.»
Source: Ravensburger
«This definitely won’t be my last competition.»
Have you ever timed yourself while doing a puzzle? How did you get on?
Header image: Ravensburger
I get paid to play with toys all day.
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