QUEEN AT JIG-SAW

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 288, 6 December 1939, Page 11

QUEEN AT JIG-SAW

A SAILOR’S PUZZLE HAD TRIED FOR HOURS. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, Nov. 4. Queen Mary, it was discovered this week, is an expert solver of jig-saw puzzles. Walking into a ward of a vVest Country naval hospital she al once noticed a man sitting propped up in bed doing a jig-saw puzzle. AbieSeaman E. Goucher, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, had been working at that puzzle all the afternoon. There was one portion that, try as he would, he had failed to lit satisfactorily together. Queen Mary walked straight over to his bed, said a few words to him, and began herself moving the pieces. Within a few minutes she had fitted many of them together and solved the portion that had been holding lip Abie-Seaman Goucher all the afternoon.

“I wish she’d been able to stay longer,’’ the sailor sighed after Queen Mary had left. “Then we should have got the whole thing finished. It was the rtiost difficult bit that she did.” In 1935 Queen Mary established the custom of putting puzzles on various tables in the sitting rooms at Sandringham so that each of her guests could complete a corner. The subject of the puzzles was kept a secret until the completed corners were joined up. Two turned out to be “The wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Kent” and "The Launching of the Queen Mary.”