The couple that puzzles
What's your name?
Zenitha Das
Where are you based?
Bangalore, India
Tell us about what your ordinary day looks like.
I’m a senior cybersecurity consultant and help make and review technology policies for my clients. Since I’m based in India and work with a team in the US, I get a lot of flexibility with respect to working hours. In my free time you’ll either see me puzzling while watching content (movies, series, song videos, puzzle content), or just watching content. Work barely takes up 3-4 hours for me and I try to get all of it done in the evening, after the daylight (perfect for doing puzzles) is gone. I also have two cats and I pester them all day. That’s an important part of my day.
How did you get into the world of puzzling?
During my MBA, a friend was gifted a Ravensburger 1000 piece puzzle of Van Gogh’s Starry Nights. We were a group of friends that used to play board games and card games together. So this felt like a nice challenge to take on as a group. One friend’s room served as the base and the entire group of perhaps 7-8 people kept working on it on and off in really bad lighting. We managed to finish it in around 2 weeks. It was a tough puzzle with all those dark sections, and it was the first puzzle for most of us. So we all felt pretty accomplished and proud of ourselves. I wanted to chase that feeling more and bought a few puzzles from here and there during the pandemic. But I soon found a whole Indian community of puzzling a couple years ago and *really* got into puzzling.
What makes you keep puzzling & how often do you puzzle?
I do at least one puzzle a day. Three, if time permits. I recently got into speed puzzling and also attended Worlds 2025 in Spain. That’s what got me into doing more different types of images instead of just doing the limited kinds of images I used to do before. I love the fact that every puzzle has a solution, and you just have to keep persevering till it’s complete. I love every single aspect of doing a puzzle. The sorting, the assembling, and yes, even the disassembling. It is therapeutic and addicting to me. I have also found a couple of other friends who are just as mad about puzzles as I am and were totally enable each other’s overspending on and planning our lives around puzzles! I also participate in whatever puzzle alongs I can, which are a great excuse to take out that one puzzle that’s been sitting on the shelf since forever.
What is your favorite type of puzzle?
For casual puzzling, my preferred piece count is 1000 pieces. I love gradients, geometric patterns, busy images with line drawings, images with a lot of mushrooms, flowers, sea animals, or birds. I also love puzzles that are predominantly blue. I enjoy paintings or art with defined lines and sections but struggle a little with Van Gogh or Monet-like brush strokes. For piece cuts, I prefer puzzles with irregular cuts or having some piece variation, but no false fits. I love it when the piece finish is textured and the puzzle has a snug fit.
During puzzling sessions, do you listen to anything or puzzle in silence?
I listen to music or audiobooks, or play the kinds of series or videos on my TV where I don’t have to look at the TV to understand what’s happening. Like shows I’ve watched several times already. I also watch Karen Puzzles’ or Canadam Puzzle’s YT videos while puzzling. It’s a good way to catch up on the puzzling or speed puzzling world. I rarely puzzle in silence.
If you were to describe what puzzling means to you, what would it be?
Puzzling is the most important thing in my life after my cats and my husband. And I’m glad to be surrounded by people who understand that and also encourage it. For a while it was a way to spend some free time with my husband at puzzle meetups. But now it’s the sole obsession of mine. I currently house 250+ puzzles with around 70 puzzles that I’m yet to do. They’re the thing I plan my day around. Besides that, puzzling has also been a way for me to find other people whose interests align with mine.
Tell us about your other interests & joys.
I enjoy reading non-fiction (feminism, politics) and watching movies and discussing them with friends. I am also a big fan of Indian music and listen to songs from many different languages that we speak here. That’s what dominates my playlist every single year and also what I listen to while puzzling.
Do you have anything you want to share?
I’m genuinely grateful to the Indian puzzle community, run by my friend Asma (@playful.pursuits on IG). She’s the one that really pulled me into puzzling and then speed puzzling and introduced me to all the wonderful brands and different materials for puzzles. I also deeply cherish the worldwide puzzling community. They are a very welcoming and kind bunch of people and I loved meeting some of them at Worlds 2025. Besides that, I’m just glad that I exist at the same time as puzzles do. I’ve done puzzles on a train, on a plane, at an airport, and even at a windy beach. Puzzles have also given me my first international trip (to Spain for Worlds 2025)!
