OGDEN -- Alex Johnson has loved doing puzzles for as long as he can remember. He also loves to be challenged, so when he found a 24,000-piece puzzle on the Internet, he knew he had found just the right thing to try.
The website, www.worldslargestpuzzle.com, claims to have the biggest puzzle in the world, and now Johnson is one of the youngest to complete the challenge. Only two other 15-year-olds in the world have completed the puzzle and no others in Utah.
"I like doing puzzles," Alex said with a shy smile. He still remembers one of the first puzzles he did in preschool, a space puzzle.
Becky Johnson, Alex's mom, proudly displays the puzzle on the longest wall in her home. "I don't think we could fit it anywhere else," she said with a laugh. The puzzle is 14 feet by 5.2 feet of color, with scenes ranging from the ocean with all its wildlife to the solar system to the city of Atlantis.
She is very proud of her son's accomplishment. He started working on the puzzle in January. Becky and Alex set up some large tables and wooden boards in their family room so Alex would have places to work and sort the puzzle pieces. Alex figures he spent about six hours just turning all 24,000 pieces over and sorting them. He laid pretty strict ground rules for his mom and two younger siblings: He did not want their help; he wanted to do it all on his own.
The puzzle is put together in four sections, so Alex would complete one section and then build the next section on top of it. Once all four sections were complete, it was time to glue it together.
"I was tense," Becky said of helping and watching Alex glue the puzzle to a large piece of foam core.
Alex admits he was a little nervous about gluing it on as well. He found some websites that explained how to do it and he found the way that seemed to work the best.
Some pieces came off in the transfer, but Alex carefully put everything back together as many times as needed.
Becky says she is still kind of nervous, having it out in the open, because she wants it to stay intact after all the hard work he put into it.
Alex walks alongside the puzzle, admiring his work, and says he doesn't think it seems that big, while his mom, brother and sister laugh.
"When I got the box, I didn't expect it to be so big, though," he said as he showed the huge box the puzzle came in.
Family members and friends have come to admire the finished product, but Becky says no one really understands the amount of work her son put into the puzzle project.
"I worried about his back because he spent so many hours bent over his puzzle," she said.
Although some late nights made him wonder if he could finish, he never really doubted himself, and neither did his mom.
"I know how determined he is and that he would finish," she said. He approaches everything in his life the same way, she said. Alex was a high honor student at Mount Ogden Junior High and will start at Ogden High School this fall. He is an accomplished pianist, runs cross country and track and is just finishing his Eagle Scout project. The puzzle was just an added hobby to an already busy life.
Alex doesn't know what's next for him in the world of puzzles. He slowly built up to the 24,000-piece puzzle, building many 3D puzzles that are scattered through the house.
"What do you do after you finish the biggest puzzle in the world?" his brother Luke said with a grin.
"I'm sure he'll figure something out," Becky said, as Alex quietly smiled.
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