Piece Talks

Emma Quirke won the UK Nationals in 2025.
Rachael Chambers won it in 2026.
Does that make them bitter rivals?
Quite the contrary!

In this episode we dig in to their intertwined history, how their differing approaches to puzzling land them within second of each other over and over again, do a deep dive into their World Series experience, and find out why they may be one of the strongest pairs out there.

EB and I are joined by several of the competitors that made a splash at this year's US Nationals. The theme that kept coming up over and over? How much everyone loved this year's event.

Joining us are:
Alice Rowe
Jessa Douglas
Josh Trauger
Lewis Dracobly-Helsel

Louise Jackett knew she had found her tribe at her very first competition. Since then, Lou has dedicated herself to giving others that same sense of community, building from Covid-era competitor to one of the most influential figures in Australian competitive puzzling. Along the way she made decisions that shaped the culture of the sport in ways she probably didn't anticipate, including an impulsive choice that gave Australian puzzlers their national identity at Worlds. That pattern of going from idea to execution runs through everything Lou does, and it's ultimately what led her to the presidency of the Australian Jigsaw Puzzle Association and to co-founding the Speed Puzzling World Series. In this episode we follow her puzzling arc, and dig into what the SPWS is all about.

Trigger Alert! THIS EPISODE CONTAINS NEARLY NO STATS!

We wanted to explore a different way of talking about the upcoming US National Championships in Atlanta.

To help us out, we brought back some former guests, and a new one you might recognize.

Thomas Kaeppeler has been at Ravensburger pretty much his entire working life. From working on the factory floor at Ravensburger headquarters in Germany, to becoming the President of Ravensburger North America.

In this episode, we get a whole DIFFERENT kind of nerdy.