Puzzle Parley 2024 Rochester Hyatt & Strong Museum Rochester DSC02512

            When we booked our flights we planned to arrive on Thursday ready for what we thought was a 3 day event. Almost immediately afterwards the programme was launched, so in order to arrive refreshed and take part in Thursdays puzzling & Meet the Collectors we decided to reschedule our flight (& overnight Heathrow-terminal hotel bed) to arrive in Rochester late on Tuesday. Although we hit some general airflight 'backlog' from earlier storms, we miraculously missed the software-hacking incident which wreaked havoc on world travel, especially on our carrier Delta. It was also good to settle in, set ourselves up for the touring holiday, and sneak a peek at some of the sales tables being set up.

There were three price levels for Puzzle Parley, with extra fees on top of the Gold tarif for the cutting workshop, speed contest & the Strong Tour. Meet the Collectors was an additional donation charity event, which we had gained access to early on and which sold out. We booked the 'Gold' experience for our first Puzzle Parley, taking part in everything except the speed contest & show & tell. 

'Casual Puzzling' took place over three days Thursday 4pm-1am, Friday 8am-1am, Saturday 8am-11pm - no puzzling on Sunday.

We visited the Strong three times, walking there, and for each event saw different parts of the Strong Museum. The Thursday evening event had talks from three collectors, with stops at a couple of museum areas displaying jigsaws, with drinks & buffet food. The Friday tour took us behind the scenes in three groups, visiting library, areas like workshops and the storage stacks, with the ability to roam the museum public areas afterwards. The final trip was on Sunday afternoon where Puzzle Parley cutters were giving cutting demonstrations to the public who could have small blanks cut up for their kids. In the album I have combined the photos from the three visits.

Because of the Parley's charity status they were not able to open the sales tables for long (it felt much more like an hour than the four promised) and there was supposed to be no browsing or pre-selling of jigsaws. Some sellers had already documented their cutting & preparations on private facebook groups.

We attended all the talks, show & tell, the results of the Pagey Elliott Puzzle Exchange (PEPE) & Best In Show voting, and the display of Pars & Parker Pastimes by Bob Armstrong. I was able to take photos of all the PEPE, Best In Show entrants and the Par/Pastime display, but wasn't able to do too much photography in the talks. There are photos in the album of the casual puzzling, and Speed Competition (these were shaky as everyone was moving so fast!). 

The event at the hotel broke up around lunchtime, but we had dinner in the hotel bar with other delegates on Sunday night and others went out to dine at local residents. Waiting in the lobby on Monday morning I saw plenty of other delegates checking out. Unfortunately the software-hacking event was still disrupting airflights for many of the delegates homeward flights.

Masks were available, but group puzzling is a high-risk activity for Covid and David tested positive on Tuesday morning, as did a few other delegates in the immediate aftermath. We had taken as many precautions as we could on our flight outwards to Puzzle Parley and the timing meant it was likely caught at the event or our first days in Rochester. Fortunately we were able to work around it and it didn't spoil our extended holiday.  I hope you enjoy the album, that it gives you a good flavour of what attending the event was like and might tempt uou to try it too.

Taken on: August 22, 2024

Sets appears in: • Puzzle Parley 2024 USA Jigsaw Convention

Groups appears in: • Traditional Wooden Jigsaws • BCD Just Jigsaws

Camera: Sony DSC-HX90V, f/4.0, 1/60 sec, 5.1mm, ISO 80 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony DSC-HX90V
Aperture:	f/4.0
Exposure Time:	0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal Length:	5.1mm
ISO:	80
Exposure Bias:	-0.3 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	PaintShop Pro 19.00
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