Frisco puzzle enthusiast conquers 60,000-piece challenge
Danny Stillman/Courtesy photo
Gary Cumbey knows a thing or two about putting a puzzle together.
Over the past 25 years, Cumbey has embodied the spirit of a typical Frisco resident. From diving into a deep patch of powder to serving as an ambassador at Copper Mountain Resort, Cumbey has exemplified what it means to be a true Summit County local.
When he’s not logging laps on the mountain or trekking up a trail, Cumbey, 88, enjoys piecing puzzles together at his kitchen table. With years of practice, he has become a seasoned expert, mastering the art of identifying patterns and subtle color variations.
After years of constructing 1,000-piece puzzles, Cumbey was gifted with his biggest build yet 鈥� a 60-section, 60,000-piece puzzle.
“I have done regular 1,000-piece puzzles for a long time,” Cumbey said. “A couple of Thanksgivings ago, my oldest daughter gave me this 60,000-piece puzzle.”
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As a puzzle connoisseur, Cumbey promptly took the puzzle back home with him from Texas and began working on the monstrosity at the beginning of 2024. Aptly named the completed piece depicts a world map with Dowdle artwork overlaid over most sections of the puzzle. Once completed, the puzzle stands at 8 feet tall, 29 feet long and weighs 75 pounds.
Like many huge projects, breaking the puzzle into distinct sections allowed Cumbey to not grow overwhelmed or burn out.
“I would work on it for a couple hours during the day, maybe a couple of hours at night,” Cumbey said. “Sometimes I would just lay off a day, take a break.”
Month after month, Cumbey would toil over the puzzle, completing entire sections in five or six days. Without enough space in his house to display each section of the puzzle, Cumbey resorted to using poster-board to store each section until the entirety of the puzzle had been put together.
“I got some cardboard pieces that were a little bit bigger than the puzzle and slid each puzzle on top of it,” Cumbey said. “I took it down to my basement and just stacked them up. Luckily I didn’t drop any going down the stairs.”
Cumbey was challenged throughout the build. While Cumbey felt like he developed a knack for recognizing puzzle piece patterns, he was often confused by sections of the puzzle that were same color.
“They come in 1,000-piece, 2.5 feet by 1 foot rectangles,” Cumbey said. “This one wasn’t that hard. A couple of pieces where you see the big yellow area of Russia were a little tough. Everything is the same color.”
Following 14 months of tedious work, Cumbey officially completed the 60-section behemoth. Upon finishing the puzzle, Cumbey reported the news to his children, who then decided to come out to Frisco in order to put the entirety of the puzzle together over the Fourth of July weekend.
On Saturday, July 5, Cumbey enthusiastically watched as his kids, their spouses and his grandkids worked together from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to move sections of the puzzle into place. With Cumbey’s driveway as the backdrop, people of all ages moved carefully in and out of the house, transporting and placing completed puzzle sections onto three large tarps.
“Everybody worked on it,” Cumbey said. “I had about 14 people here and about six or seven of them worked on聽it pretty consistently. I didn’t do any of the work to put it together. I just watched them. It went together pretty good. They got pretty handy at doing it.”
Once every section had been put into place, Cumbey marveled at the completed work before standing alongside and even on the puzzle for celebratory photos.
Following months of labor, determination and perseverance, Cumbey made swift work of the deconstruction process, scooping up entire sections and quickly putting them in the dumpster.
“After we took a bunch of pictures, we took it all apart and threw it away,” Cumbey said. “It went in the dumpster. The whole thing went in the dumpster. It is over, I am done.”
While Cumbey loves puzzles more than most, the longtime Summit County resident has no plans to tackle a major project like “The World’s Largest Puzzle” anytime soon. Instead, he plans to continue enjoying the many activities he loves in the High Country 鈥� and maybe finish a 1,000-piece puzzle along the way.
“I think I am taking a break for a while,” Cumbey said “I will go back to doing the regular 1,000-piece puzzles or 1,500 pieces. They are fun to do. I just do them on my dining room table. I look at them for a couple of days, take it apart and put it all back in the box.”
