Inside a snug little shop near 72nd Avenue and Lowell Boulevard in Historic Westminster, a tiny bell over the doorframe jingles as a first-time customer enters a puzzler’s paradise.
“Oh wow!” says a wide-eyed woman with her adult son in tow, carrying a stack of completed puzzles, boxed and ready to be traded in.
Thousands upon thousands of puzzles don’t just fill the shop; they’re practically holding up the roof, spanning floor-to-ceiling in every room, meticulously categorized by size, difficulty, manufacturer, artist, and subject matter.
Missing Piece Puzzle Exchange (7188 Lowell Blvd) is more than just a hidden gem of Westminster’s small business community. It’s the result of a years-long revolution in puzzling started by Erin Leidy.
“We have about 7,500 to 8,500 puzzles available at any given time,” she said. “We’ve come a long way from the garage.”
As a lifelong puzzler, Leidy almost always has a puzzle going on her kitchen table, where she can passively place pieces while watching TV or listening to audiobooks.
She previously relied on thrift stores and big box retailers to keep her hobby going, but eventually hit a wall. She started seeing the same puzzles over and over again on the shelves at Target, and kept finding thrift store puzzles to be a few pieces short of the total advertised.
Leidy dreamt of being able to rent puzzles like Netflix DVDs in the pre-streaming era and started Missing Piece Puzzle Exchange to fulfill that dream in 2020. Nowadays the shop has a national reach, with rental members across the country and a thriving local community that hosts competitions and meetups across the Denver metro area.
Puzzles can be bought outright or rented. Monthly memberships are available for those who want to continually swap out items, accessing the limitless inventory without having to fill their homes with boxes.
For locals, the store has unmatched selection. Puzzles range from 12-piece beginner jigsaws for 2-year-olds all the way up to a 12,000-piece Ravensburger puzzle depicting a full medieval fantasy scene. The store prides itself on carrying 3D puzzles, miniature model kits, and hard-to-find puzzle brands like Liberty, a high-quality puzzle maker based in Boulder.
“We’re not just for puzzle-crazy people,” Leidy said. “We really do have something for everybody.”
For longtime rental member Sue Grounds, that something is a way to connect with her sister, who has Alzheimer’s. She regularly makes the trip from southeast Denver to find exactly what she needs.
“The small pieces are really hard,” Grounds said. “She can’t do it by herself, so I usually sit by her side and talk her through the process. She gets pretty excited when we finish a 300 or 350-piece puzzle in a couple sittings.”
Although puzzles can be a cozy, solitary hobby, social connection is central to the shop’s success. Leidy prides herself on introducing people to the hobby, hosting events, and encouraging passionate puzzlers.
2024 World Champion Speed Puzzler Alice Rowe began her illustrious career as a renter with Missing Piece Puzzle Exchange in April 2022.
Meanwhile, the journey is just beginning for first-time customer Jaye Leon and her son Chris Heinz, who made a day trip to visit. It doesn’t take long for Leon to find a whole section of Dowdle puzzles, her favorite.
“What I especially like about them are the cities,” she says, as she points to a busy cityscape. “I found this one in a thrift store, got all the way through it, only to find so much of it missing. I was so mad!”
One of the most impressive aspects of Missing Piece is the store’s attention to detail and maintaining the puzzles in the rental program. Leidy has a troupe of six volunteer “puzzle doers” who assemble returned puzzles to ensure that no pieces went missing.
Occasionally, Leidy or one of her volunteers will even hand-craft a custom piece when needed to complete a set.
“For local puzzlers, this place is a game changer.”
Erin Leidy
While his mother shops the Dowdle section, Heinz drops his armful of completed puzzles at the desk. Missing Piece will sift through each of them and buy back what they can, adding to the store’s immense selection and contributing a few dollars toward Leon and Heinz’ next haul.
“We do puzzles together almost every day,” Heinz said. “I just got back from Texas after a year and a half away, so mom’s happy to have her puzzle buddy back.”
To learn more about Missing Piece Puzzle Exchange and puzzle rentals for the holidays, or any time of year, visit the store’s website, puzzleexchange.com.