On a refreshingly cool Saturday evening, when the rest of Chennai was probably out enjoying the weather or catching a movie, I found myself hunched over a table, trying to assemble a triangle out of three disjointed pieces of wood. A young man at the adjacent table is enjoying a plate of nachos, revelling in the success of putting together a 3D model of London’s Big Ben. Beyond him is a different sort of chaos — a family of three desperately trying to assemble a Lion King Puzzle.
We are at Untangle, a newly opened puzzle-solving lounge in Teynampet. Here, black tables and chairs are propped up against bright white walls, decorated with vibrant art. Nestled between the wall and the tables is an elaborately carved, giant sudoku table with numbered pieces.
For founders Senthilnathan and Subhatra, diving into jigsaw puzzles is a means to de-stress. Senthil, who previously worked in the banking sector for 12 years, says Untangle had its genesis during regular outings with their four-year-old daughter. “At all these activity centres, kids have fun, but adults are just waiting, twiddling their thumbs and checking their phones. When we go to places like restaurants or pubs, there’s nothing for the kids to do. So we thought why not combine these two and create a space where both adults and kids can have fun together?”
Indeed, most of Untangle’s customers so far have been families. They tend to gravitate towards the classic canon of puzzles — the jigsaw. The range of jigsaw puzzles here at Untangle is massive: from relatively simple 300-piece birds and animals, to mammoth 3000-piece landscapes and movie posters, complex 3D assembling of monuments, mosaic mind-benders and finally, the most fiendish of them all — puzzles with no image for reference.
Senthil says he has seen a few Hall-of-Famers already: a nine-year-old boy who assembled an imposing Eiffel Tower and an eight-year-old girl who blitzed through five puzzles in just 90 minutes.
If jigsaws don’t interest you, Untangle also has a collection of ‘sit and solve’ puzzles. They are logic or pattern-based and come with a task: either form a pattern or take it apart. Each take around five to 10 minutes to solve, with multiple difficulty levels. Senthil says customers usually enter with the idea of spending one hour but end up spending easily 3-4. What they are after is usually the sheer elation of cracking it.
He adds that none of the puzzles at Untangle are esoteric or need players to know a specific trick to solve them. They are puzzles that can be worked out just based on a hunch or a hint. “We’ve collected about 40 such puzzles from around the world. Some were invented in the past and have died down. Most of our customers are unfamiliar with these puzzles,” says Senthil. They even have a Tamil version of Scrabble.
Untangle also houses board games, but only those which do not involve any element of luck, like the roll of a dice. They are purely dependent on smart thinking and strategising. For now, Untangle plans to host regular events, like a jigsaw puzzle marathon, where you can sign up and help solve a 6000-piece monster.
Both Senthil and Subhatra flit across from table to table, patiently explaining the rules of various puzzles, nudging the players with clues and sharing their elation when it is solved. Subhatra, who runs Choc of the Town, also manages the cafe at Untangle, where you can get everything from filter coffee to waffles to aid you while flexing those brain cells.
Puzzle solving for some is a strictly solitary pursuit. For others, it is a chance to celebrate as a group, to have a meaningful interaction that doesn’t use emoticons. Walk into Untangle and you’ll experience the conviviality: fast talk, laughter, the pitter-patter of pieces being sorted. The one thing you’ll rarely see is someone’s head buried in a glowing phone screen. A poster on the wall proudly says ‘Wifi password: ThereIsNoWifiHere’.
Untangle is at KB Dasan Road, Teynampet, and is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 11 am to 9 pm. Costs ₹200 per head for an hour, and ₹100 per hour afterward. Contact 9840673880
