Thursday, February 7, 2008

Welcome to WhatCouldIt.Be.

There's not much to it. There's mixed-up pictures that you un-mix-up. You can upload your own pictures and share them with everyone, or just with your friends & family.

How did this come to be? Let me tell you. My grandma is almost 90 years old. She is spry of mind and body. She still goes fishing nearly every week, and she always has a folding card table set up with a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle spreading out across it in some state of completion.

As a kid I loved visiting my grandparents house because grandma always had (and still has) lots of puzzles to play with; rubiks cubes to twist until the colors matched, 3-D wooden puzzles to fit together, locking metal rings to unlock, plastic slider puzzles to solve by shifting the numbered squares around until they were in order, and puzzle books to search out all the words in the grids of letters. And always, every couple weeks, a new jigsaw puzzle. I would sit quietly, intent on finding pieces to snap into place, while the adults talked about whatever the adults talked about. I still don't know.

I have kids of my own now, and they love puzzles too. My son is 3 and a half and knows all the states in the US better than I do because it's his favorite puzzle. It's exciting to watch him get excited about learning. It's good for us to flex a little mental muscle and have some fun at the same time. It keeps us young, no matter our age.

My grandma doesn't have a computer, much less an internet connection, and my son is a little too little still, so though they are the inspiration for the site, they don't get to play with it. But I'm hoping that there are at least a few other puzzle-lovers out there who will enjoy passing some time here solving some puzzles. If you are one of those people, welcome, and thank you!

We're in beta right now, so you may find some bugs, missing features, or pages that could be better designed. Please bear with us, and feel free to drop us a line and tell us what you think, good, bad or ugly; .

Thanks!
-JH.