The giant puzzle that finally broke me

This video was sponsored by Factor.

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Today I’m taking on the Roiter Challenge - I’m trying to solve the 5000 piece Fantastic Street puzzle in only 2 days. Try this challenge at your own risk - my back was in a lot of pain for several days afterwards.

Get the same puzzle here:
(affiliate link)

(To be clear, even though I have worked with Ravensburger in the past, this video is not sponsored by them. I bought this puzzle with my own money.)

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I sped up the time lapses for the video, but over on Patreon I edited them into one long hour-long video where you can watch the entire puzzle come together from beginning to end:

Jeanne and Cathy Roiter’s original Instagram post about this puzzle is here:

Want more speed puzzling? Watch my Worlds and Nationals recaps:

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Get the Gradient Cascade puzzle with the cutout shapes here:

Get my third puzzle Colors on Colors, which surprisingly actually has 1008 pieces:

Get my first puzzle Puzzles on Puzzles, which is a 3000 piece celebration of gradients:

This is the clock that I was using:

Get the same trays that I use:

Get the same timer that I use:

Get the box stand I use:

(Amazon affiliate links)

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#puzzle #jigsawpuzzles #jigsaw 🧩🧩🧩🧩🧩

Music from Soundstripe

Use code PUZZLE10 to save 10%
(I will make a commission on every signup with this link and code)

[sarahnicole]

I am housebound, severely limited in my mobility, and your channel has inspired me to try doing jigsaw puzzles. I completed my first one - 300 pieces - just yesterday. Thank you, Karen, for being my inspiration ❤️

[elisadaygrey]

This reminds me of the time I could not stop doing a 2000 piece puzzle so I didn't. When I was done, I hydrated, ate, and went for a walk and everywhere I looked, I saw puzzle pieces 😆😂 you're an athlete!

[prawQ]

I think most people, except for your audience, do not understand how crazy this is. A 5k puzzle in two day is insane! In the 80ties 5k was close to as much as you could go (there were some rare exceptions) and people worked for at least a month on such a puzzle. This is an insane peak performance on a level of an athlete jumping over 8m or running 100m in 10.0s!

[pinkseonghwa]

The sorting alone would take me two days 😂

[ShellyZadorozny-cbcg]

Doing that puzzle by yourself is so much harder with a partner you got so one to cheer on to help out when it gets hard

[dylanjaymz]

Right when you started doing the math of 2 people in thirteen 1 in 2 days. I literally out loud "oooohhh girrll what are you getting yourself into." 😂 love you so much

[evapreu]

Okay you already lost me at getting up to start at 7 am 😅I'm not cut out for that kind of challenge 😂

[Duffyyy]

I love how you said "It's a challenge so it is supposed to be challenging." I feel like a lot of the time, not just in the puzzle world, people will do "challenges" but don't want to struggle. It makes it worth it in the end!

[bleedingblue]

I only do big puzzles (9000+) these days and it typically takes several months depending on my mood from week to week. But these videos always motivate me to jump back in and pick up the pace. TREE!

[sweetea]

"I'm not doing hang on, I just saw a piece" lmaooo 😂😂 so relatable. Fun video! And what a challenge! Glad you got through it <3

[botredrew]

I recently actually finished the biggest puzzle I´ve done so far. It´s the 42.000 Piece Puzzle "around the world" from Educa. It took me around 1 year and 1 month doing it. Most of time alone but every now and then I did get some help from a second person. And before someone asks - yes, it had a lot of trees in it ;)

I can't believe the TREE was the hardest part, it looks so benign and not a super large section. It looks insane to do it all in 2 days. Great work!

[badgerrambler]

I own this puzzle and as soon as I saw your thumbnail I sighed… it’s gonna take me about a month longer than you to do this!! Good job! 😂

[elisajoyda]

Finding every single edge piece in a single sort is amazing!! Wow!🎉

[jochen]

A new definition of Puzzle-Challenges:
"Roiter-" = team effort on a very large
"Karen-" = solo challenge on a very large Puzzle.
Karen, you set a very high bar on the "Karen-Challenge".
That was a very very impressive world record.
I did not expect solo to be more time efficient.

[Pointsman]

The biggest puzzle I've done (together with my wife) was the ravensburger 5000 piece "Modern Rome", which is in the genre "puzzles made by people who hate puzzlers", At first glance it looks nice, but it's like 2000 pieces of marble statues and pillars and 2000 pieces of paintings and their frames (which are not as distinct as one would think), so it took us ~6 months and almost ended our relationship, but we did it and alls well that ends well. Codeword : Tree

[kittencuddler]

How could you possibly have listened to SotR while puzzling and there's NO evidence of tears on the puzzle? That's the most impressive part of this video

[Mellie]

"That was so much fun"... collapses into heap on the floor 💗😊

[Sandra.p.]

Husband and I do puzzels almost every day, started with 1000 piece, mostly van hastereen and wasgij, we recently started doing 1500 piece puzzles as we finished the 1000 piece ones too quickly and now we're doing our first 2000 piece one, it's so nice with bigger puzzles. we've reached our kitchen tables max-size now, but we're moving in a few months, getting a bigger kitchen so a bigger kitchen table might be on the horizon. love your videos!!

[rebeccawicks]

You can't factor in the mental and physical fatigue that comes with doing this puzzle solo compared to the Roiters doing it together, so I'd say an hour difference is pretty darn impressive! Did you dream about puzzles after this? (Do you dream about puzzles often...?) Haha. Love the art too, it looks satisfying but I'd not take it on unless it was like, 50% smaller or less 😅