Hi Greg, for readers not familiar with you could you let us know who you are and what you do?
Hi Henry and hi all - I’m Greg, a Marketer by day and a puzzler by night. I’ve been a puzzle lover since my very first days as a human being. Since 2020 I started making content about puzzles and so far produced over 500 puzzle videos online showcasing my collection under the name “Puzzle Wanderer”. I’ve recently rebranded myself to my real name, Greg Gelf, and I continue producing puzzle content with around 200K followers across platforms, as well as creating puzzles in my own shop, Greg Puzzles.
How did you first get into puzzles, can you remember the first one you solved?
The first memory I have of any puzzle was a 200-piece jigsaw puzzle I tried at like 5 or 6 years old. After putting it together once, I decided to try and solve it upside down. It took a while but I did it.
Later on I found a Rubik’s Cube at home, and was sure it’s 100% impossible to solve, until my best friend in school at 13 years learned to do it through his cousin and teached me how to do it - and I got completely obsessed. That is when I started searching for puzzles online and got into the rabbit hole - I frequently read all the OG blogs, Kevin’s, Allard’s and many more until I found a puzzle said to be the world’s hardest.
It was called the ISIS orb. I was intrigued. I wanted to try it. But then I saw a blog post about how bad it is, that recommended Revomaze instead. So I asked for a Revomaze for a present, and from there the rest is history.
So lot’s of people fall into the rabbit hole of puzzles. What was the journey from discovering puzzles to writing and making videos about them?
That’s a good question. The first amazing experience I had in the puzzle sphere is after getting a Revomaze. I got the Orange as a first and got stuck in the first third of the puzzle. They used to have an active forum with many puzzlers, talking about the mazes themselves and puzzles overall. There I met someone who was stuck in the same place as I was, Phil, and we started doing masterminds.
We became friends, I was a 13 year-old teen from Israel, and Phil was in his 20s then. We talked a lot about puzzles, he showed me cool stuff from his puzzle collection, and I even remember how we talked about the birth of his first daughter and how excited he was. We became friends since and kept in touch.
When I was 15 or 16 Phil sent me a box of puzzles he had, and I was soooo surprised. I didn’t believe such kindness existed in the world until then. In his birthday a year or two later, I bought him a limited edition puzzle from Mr Puzzle Australia, which was also a big shop back in the days that Brian Young and his wife, Sue used to run.
So with that moving forward I had a really pleasant experience with people in this hobby, and as an introverted teenager it was pretty cool to meet friends from across the globe through mutual interest.
At 18 I forgot about the hobby because in Israel we have mandatory service, and for 3 years I couldn’t afford puzzles.
Only during COVID I finally came back to them, having lots of spare time after my service has ended and I had to find my direction in life. I revisited puzzles I solved, but the scariest, most daunting challenge, was yet another Revomaze puzzle - the Silver. I had it laying around for 7 years unsolved, stuck in the last section of the puzzle.
And I remember how one night I just had an idea that struck me like lightning.
It’s a thing with ADHD. You’re living your life and suddenly ideas just come to you. So after 7 years of barely touching it, I tried to execute this random idea that I had. It didn’t work at first, but then - eureka! A few tweaks in the execution and after one last challenge - I completed the maze!!
I was overjoyed, but at the same time - in the heat of covid, no one around me, in the physical world, could even understand 1% of my joy and sense of achievement. I felt like I’m crazy.
So I decided to share how I feel about the whole experience in a blog. It took a while to set it up, I had to learn web design from scratch, but in the end - I did just that - wrote a whole article about the fantastic feeling I had from solving that Silver Revomaze.
A few weeks into making puzzle content I fell in love with content creation, and later with marketing - knowing that I write about something I love online, share value with possibly tens and hundreds of millions of people, and help people learn something new WHILE spending time on one of my favorite hobbies was priceless to me.
Obviously we both love puzzles but is there any over hobbies or passions you have?
I have too many, and I am often changing my obsessio… I mean hobbies.
Currently I’m really passionate about retro-gaming, replaying stuff from my PS2 in my spare time and trying cool games from the 90s.
I also play the piano and guitar, I like looking at the sea, reading books and meeting new people.
At times I’m learning Japanese and reading Japanese manga, which is their version of a comic. Sometimes I learn card-tricks.
Other times I watch TV and I like sleeping more than I should.
Overall I really enjoy learning new things and trying new experiences, because I feel like everything I try and explore boosts my creative juices.
Puzzles come in all sorts of styles, is there any that you prefer?
I used to say Sequential Discovery, but after solving lots I’m now less excited about them. Instead, I really enjoy minimalistic puzzles that usually come in the form of packing puzzles. The simpler the puzzle is, with either less pieces or the easier it seems at first, the more I like it.
I also used to like puzzles that take a lot of time to solve, but now that I have less free time as an adult, I actually like puzzles that can give you a feeling of discovery without necessarily taking a whole evening to figure out.
For example, some Karakuri Puzzle Boxes are exactly that - simple, quick but brain-blasting.
As long as the puzzle gives this kind of experience, I like it. Mostly, I find it on 2D and 3D Packing Puzzles, some Sequential Discovery puzzles Puzzle Boxes, but not limited to.
By this point you must have amassed a fair collection, any idea of the number of puzzles you currently have?
I’ve actually started making an excel mastersheet of all puzzles I have in my collection last month, And there’s still much more to go. I counted 200 puzzles and I went through what I believe is half my collection, so I think I’ve got around 400.
I find it very difficult to part with puzzles, are you the same or do you like to give away/ sell part of the collection every so often?
I gave away some puzzles off the record to my friends, and I sold or traded some high-end puzzles to get other expensive ones in the past. But it feels really bad trading or selling the higher-priced ones. I sometimes need to, but I usually regret it later.
Have you got an all time favourite puzzle or a dream puzzle you’d love to own? What is it about that puzzle that really appeals to you?
I don’t have any all-time favorites because my taste seems to change pretty often, but in the last 2 years my favorites have been GiiKER Super Slide and Allard’s Think Sticks.
My Dream was always The Angel Box by Wil Strijbos, which I actually tried in a 3D printed version so now I guess I need to find a new dream puzzle. In the past 2 years I mainly solved common puzzles since that’s what my audience liked most, so I got used to feeling content the way it is. I hope it stays this way since it’s easier when the puzzle collector urge isn’t tingling XD
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. Before we finish up what are you plans for 2025, anything you can share?
Thank you for having me!
This year I’m expanding on what I built to develop an my puzzle shop, Greg Puzzles to have some of the best puzzles in the world. I’m planning to have 25 puzzles that aren’t available anywhere else by the end of the year, all while staying consistent with my content across platforms.
The biggest challenge I’m having is how to simplify puzzles and help people that aren’t obsessed or collectors understand and enjoy their genius mechanisms. I feel like I’ll be delving deeper inside the psychology behind puzzle-solving and how they affect our minds, and I expect this theme to influence my puzzle projects this year.
Thanks very much to Greg for sitting down with us. If you'd like to check out more of Greg's work you can find his puzzle store over here.
