Marvel The Amazing 1000 Dot-To-Dot is laser focused fun for teens and up

“I used to love dot-to-dot puzzles”, the lady at the bagel place said as she sat next to me. I felt just a bit juvenile as she said that and opened up Marvel, The Amazing 1000 Dot-To-Dot Book so that she could see one of the incomplete puzzles. “Wow, does everyone need a magnifying glass to do them or are we just old”?

It eased my ego and aging eyes to let her know that even our 7 year old needed a magnifying glass when he tried to do one. He tried to do it with his toy magnifying glass. I tried to complete one of the puzzles with that, but then realized that I needed to go full Monty and buy a proper magnifying glass.

This all seems a bit much for a dot-to-dot puzzle. How hard or even-how much fun could it be for adults?

One of the great aspects of LEGO is looking at the mass of small plastic pieces and wondering how it all combines to form something graceful. That is the same feeling you get when finishing one of these puzzles. And they are puzzles, not normally a word you’d associate with a dot-to-dot. When you first look at one of these you have no idea what shape it will take. All you can do is start connecting the dots and the picture will reveal itself.

Each puzzle is broken up into groups of 100, with each group having a different color to better identify them. Once you get started you’ll find a rhythm, but it’s tricky at first. Sometimes the lines will double back, going over what’s previously been drawn to connect a dot that logically doesn’t seem like it should be connected. The result is a line that extends out, something that does not happen in the dot-to-do puzzles you did when you were younger. If that happened in those puzzles then something was wrong and you missed a dot. In these puzzles that’s part of the effect that helps create the bigger picture.

Hint: use a pen with a very fine point and don’t panic if you can’t find the next number. The number is there, it’s just not where you’re looking. If you absolutely can’t find the number, don’t panic, take a break and try again. Then if you can’t find it simply look for the closest one in numerical sequence.

Each puzzle will take up to an hour and requires immense concentration. In today’s tech heavy world it’s very relaxing and refreshing to focus so much on one task. Also, unless you have the eyes of a pilot, you will need a magnifying glass.

Back at the bagel place I could feel someone looking at me. I glanced up to see one of the regulars trying to figure out what I was doing. “It’s an intricate dot-to-dot puzzle”. He very kindly said that he thought it was a drawing due to the detail. From a distance it does look free form and to that point each page is perforated so that you can cleanly rip off each one to fool, or impress people.