What is all the craze with the Jigazo puzzle?

If you've never heard of this portrait puzzle, you're in for a real treat.

I saw a commercial for this product on television the other day and immediately knew that it was going to be a real treat for you puzzle heads!

You might be asking yourself, what is it?

Isn't it just like any other puzzle out there?

Maybe you don't even really like puzzles...It's okay because when you see this, you will want one for yourself. The puzzle consists of 300 pieces.

Each individual piece has a gradient on it (different colors in various shading from light to dark colors) and depending on how you place the pieces together, virtually any picture can be reproduced with this one set.

The geniuses from Japan who came up with this concept of Jigazo which means 'self portrait' made this puzzle so you can arrange and rearrange it an infinite amount of times without having the same picture twice.

There is a little bit of emailing to do on your part (which I'll explain) to get your mug as the resulting picture but that's the easy part. What you do is find yourself a good looking (or any picture) of yourself or even something you like and email it over to the puzzle people.

Once they get the configuration of how each piece should go (remember there are little icons on the backs of each piece) you will get instructions to put it together to make your face recognizable as a Jigazo.

Pretty cool huh.

You can do your face, you're dogs face, even your car.

Anything at all, just use your imagination. How do they do that you ask?

Lots of math and some genius with a computer specializing in science and design.

Do you want to recreate it? You may need a doctorate in some crazy differentials or something. Instead if you are like me, you'll just want the entertainment factor in putting this portrait puzzles together over and over again. I'll stick to that and leave the equations and technical aspect behind the puzzle to the creators.

Seriously, even if you don't like puzzles, you'll look at Jigazo in a completely new light. Check it out for yourselves.