How to Make Interactive Map Jigsaws

Did you know that you can make and play online map jigsaws on the Jigsaw Explorer website. Jigsaw Explorer allows you to create interactive online jigsaws from any image - including images of maps.

If you want to dive straight in and try to complete a map jigsaw then you can try this jigsaw I created of a 17th Century Map of Oxfordshire.

If you want to create your own map jigsaws then just follow these helpful tips:

The biggest online collection of map images is probably the David Rumsey Map Collection. To create a map with the Jigsaw Explorer you need to get the map's JPEG image URL. Here's how to do that for a David Rumsey Collection map.

On a map's dedicated page on the David Rumsey Map Collection website is a 'Share' link. If you click on this 'Share' button you can see and copy the map's IIIF manifest URL.



If you copy and paste this IIIF URL into your browser's address bar you will see a page that looks like this.



Halfway down this page you should be able to see the web address of a JPEG image for your chosen map. If you copy this JPEG address you can paste it into the Jigsaw Explorer's Create Your Own Puzzle page to make a jigsaw from the David Rumsey map.

It is that simple.

The first ever jigsaw was believed to have been made by cartographer John Spilsbury. Spilsbury created his first puzzle in 1766 from a world map. The puzzle was designed as an educational tool to teach geography. I of course had to make an interactive jigsaw from the same world map.

Here are some links to jigsaws that I created from maps found in the David Rumsey Map Collection:

• World Atlas
• State Bird and Flower Map of the United States
• Harry Beck's London Underground Map
• Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica Ac Hydrographica Tabula, 1642 - a double hemisphere map of the world, based upon an earlier map by Hondius.
• Equal Earth projection - invented by Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson in 2018 (the image for this map taken from Wikipedia).