You know the person. There is a card table in the corner that nobody is allowed to lean on, the edge pieces are already sorted, and dinner will be eaten somewhere else until the sky is finished.
Museum shops are a good place to buy for them, because a painting is a better puzzle than a photograph of a harbor. Brushwork gives every piece a little information, and the shop that sells the puzzle often owns the picture, so the image is a careful one.
We picked 15 from 8 museum shops and grouped them by kind: famous paintings, the modern ones that fight back, smaller puzzles for one evening, and a few unusual formats. Each note gives the piece count, the finished size where the shop states it, and what will make it easy or hard.
The classic format. All four are recognizable from across the room, which does not make them easy.
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, painted in 1942 and owned by the Art Institute of Chicago. 1,000 pieces by Pomegranate, finishing at 29 by 20 inches. The lit diner and its four figures go together quickly. Then you are left with a lot of dark street and dark window, and the evening gets longer.
Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day, from 1877, another Art Institute painting. 1,000 pieces by Pomegranate, 25 by 20 inches finished. The figures and umbrellas are your landmarks. The hard part is the wet cobblestones and the pale gray sky, which is most of the picture. It is a puzzle about gray, and a good one.
Holbein's The Ambassadors, painted in 1533, in a 1,000-piece puzzle made in Britain, 66 by 50 cm, with a full-size poster in the box. The shelves of instruments and the patterned floor help. The black robes and green curtain do not. Sold by the Royal Ontario Museum's shop, priced in Canadian dollars.
Tom Thomson's The Jack Pine, painted in 1916 and 1917 and now in the National Gallery of Canada. 1,000 pieces by Eurographics with a linen finish, 19.25 by 26.5 inches. The tree is the easy part. Sky and lake are built from similar broad horizontal strokes, so save some patience. Priced in Canadian dollars.
No horizon, no faces, sometimes no subject. For the person who says the last puzzle was too easy.
The hardest thing on this list. A Richard Misrach photograph from his On the Beach series, titled Half-Beach, Half-Water, and that is exactly what you get: one field of sand, one of sea. 1,000 pieces, 27 by 20 inches, an SFMOMA exclusive. Give it only to someone who asked for trouble.
Stuart Davis painted Premiere in 1957, and it is in LACMA's permanent collection. 504 pieces, 16 by 20 inches finished. Hard-edged shapes in a few flat, bright colors, with block lettering here and there to steer by. Flat color means you sort by piece shape as much as by picture.
Basquiat's untitled 1981 painting of a head, usually called Skull. 500 pieces by Rome Pays Off, 24 by 18 inches, with a full-image reference card. The scratchy lines give most pieces something to read, but nothing in it has a clean edge, so it is slower than the count suggests.
Roy De Forest's Country Dog Gentlemen, from 1972: at least nine wild-eyed dogs staring out of a landscape covered in colored dots. 1,000 pieces, 20 by 27 inches. The friendliest puzzle in this section, because every dog is a landmark. The dots are where the time goes.
A 500-piece puzzle made by the Louisiana Museum in Denmark for its Remedios Varo exhibition, which runs to January 2027. It comes in two versions, each a different painting by the Spanish-Mexican Surrealist. The page gives the box size, 33.5 by 23 cm, but not the finished size. Priced in Danish kroner.
Fewer pieces, and pictures with strong shapes. Good for mixed company and for people who want to finish before bed.
Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa in 500 pieces, an Art Institute of Chicago exclusive made by Pomegranate. It finishes at 27 by 18 inches, large for the count, so the pieces are easy to handle. The wave and the boats come fast. The pale sky is the only slow stretch.
Andy Warhol's Flowers, from his 1970 series, as a 500-piece square puzzle by Galison, 20 by 20 inches. Big simple shapes make it approachable. The catch is that flat color tells you little, so inside each flower you are matching shapes. The matte box is nice enough to leave out.
The poster Alexander Calder made for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1965, the year the museum opened on Wilshire Boulevard. 336 pieces, finishing at 12 by 18 inches. The smallest flat puzzle here, and a sensible first one for an older child or a tired adult.
Two puzzles sharing 500 pieces. One side shows the outside of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim, the other an aerial blueprint. One face is glossy and one matte, so you can tell which way up a piece is. 20 by 20 inches, by Galison. Double-sided is harder than it sounds. Start with the building.
A 300-piece wooden puzzle of The Peasant Wedding, which the shop credits to Pieter Brueghel the Younger. It finishes at 12 by 18 inches. A crowded feast suits wood well: nearly every piece holds a face, a hat or a dish. The shop notes bag color and box design may vary. Priced in Canadian dollars.
Not a jigsaw, and not hard: five pieces that fit together into the Gilder Center, the wing the American Museum of Natural History opened in 2023. Each is about 4 by 3 inches, 3D printed, hand sanded and lacquer dipped in Brooklyn. It comes in a burlap bag. A desk object for an architecture person.
We read the public catalogs of the museum shops. Nobody paid to be on this list, and no brand sent us samples: we have not handled these items ourselves. Sizes and materials come from each shop's own product page, which is also where you buy.
Prices can change and items sell out. When a pick is no longer listed by its shop, it drops off this page.
Our notes on difficulty come from the image and the piece count, not from a stopwatch. Puzzles also sell through in small batches, so check the shop's page before you promise one to anybody.
Want to see everything? Browse all 109 puzzles from museum shops.