About Us

Hi Puzzlers,

Today I thought we would take a look how White Mountain Puzzles got started.

Now celebrating its 32th anniversary, White Mountain Puzzles was started in 1978 by owners CRONAN MINTON and TED WROBLEWSKI.

Necessity was the mother of invention. Cronan and Ted needed to support their growing families. Freelance writing (Cronan) and running a country inn (Ted) were unreliable sources of income.

At first, the partners created illustrated posters of resort areas like CAPE COD, CARMEL, SEDONA, KILLINGTON, ASPEN, and VAIL. Traveling up and down the country, they sold advertising on entertaining “birds eye view” posters to restaurants, inns, and gift shops. Their first company, named MINTOWSKI PUBLICATIONS, was eventually renamed WHITE MOUNTAIN GRAPHICS, which flourished through the 1980s.

Customers often commented that their artwork – colorful, full of information, and geographically complex – would make great jigsaw puzzles. In 1988, needing new product ideas, they added puzzles to their line. Almost overnight, their puzzles STOLE THE SHOW.
By 1990, Cronan and Ted had renamed their company WHITE MOUNTAIN PUZZLES. They bought an office building, which included the Jackson, N.H. post office. The company is still headquartered here today.

While resort puzzles still play an important role in their business, Cronan and Ted now sell over a million puzzles a year. Not bad for two entrepreneurs who moved their families to the White Mountains because they loved to ski.

Now, Cronan and Ted have a whole warehouse filled with puzzles for their grandchildren to enjoy.

Happy Puzzling!

Artist Diane Phalen

Hi Puzzlers,

Watercolorist Diane Phalen is known nationally for her exquisite quilt designs and her quilt-oriented portraits. The following is an excerpt from her web site.

“Most important to me is to be able to convey emotion in a painting: I want my viewers to be able to feel the summer day, the wind, or any other aspect of a painting. I want the scent of the flowers to be present, the mood of an autumn sky or winter sunset, a moment of peace and contentment connecting nature with our heritage and values. I want the eye to move through each painting and discover delightful, hidden elements like a butterfly on a bush or a cat resting among garden blossoms.”

Diane’s magnificent paintings have been featured in numerous juried, solo and group exhibitions, and she is represented in galleries throughout the United Sates. Her museum quality watercolors are in corporate, historical, and private collections in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Japan, and Australia.

Due to the extraordinary amount of detail in Diane’s work, a painting can take up to two months to complete and often longer, depending upon her travel schedule. “I love to experiment with the medium. A favorite technique of mine is to use a palette knife to highlight hidden layers of color. I have also used salt, a nail file, fluorescent gouache, sand paper, and watercolor pencils to achieve various effects.”

Articles on Diane Phalen have appeared in most major American quilting publications, and she is a welcome speaker at quilt shows around the country. Her work appears on prints, cards, calendars, fabric products and in her books on quilting. Let’s not forget PUZZLES!

Happy Puzzling!

Presidential Hobbies

Hi Puzzlers,

Presidents Day is Monday February 15th and I thought it would be fun to take a look at what some of the Presidents did as hobbies. Why HOBBIES, you may ask? Well, I think looking at the hobbies of the Presidents allows us to see a side of a President’s personality that we may have never known.

Take, for example, Calvin Coolidge. He liked to play the harmonica, ride a mechanical bull, and used “Indian Clubs” for exercise. First of all, what is an Indian Club? And, second, Calvin Coolidge looks so refined and proper that the image of him riding a mechanical bull, swinging around a club and blowing on a harmonica does not fit my preconceived notion of him. Ah!!! But things do change and things are not always as they appear, as the infamous saying goes.

John Adams enjoyed a daily swim in the District of Columbia’s Potomac River. Okay- not too unusual, I know, but he liked to do it nude! He also got caught swimming one day by reporter Anne Royall and was forced to give her an interview before she would leave so he could get out of the river. If that didn’t shatter yet another image of a President, picture him playing billiards. Yes, he played pool and even bought a pool table for the White House with his own money.

Warren Harding's favorite hobby was poker! He had nightly games in the White House and served alcohol….this was during prohibition! Harry Truman also enjoyed poker playing and Dwight Eisenhower enjoyed bridge.

Herbert Hoover exercised with a medicine ball! His cabinet and staff would join him regularly in the morning and soon became known as the “medicine ball cabinet.”

Richard Nixon enjoyed bowling at the White House Bowling Alley which was inaugurated by President Truman on April 25, 1947. President Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson also enjoyed the sport of bowling.

George H. W. Bush enjoyed playing horseshoes so much he had a horseshoe court installed on the White House lawn. He also went skydiving!

Our current President Barack Obama enjoys basketball.

Click here for a here a quick quiz!

Happy Puzzling!

Women Pilots Of World War II

Hi Puzzlers,

From the moment the puzzle of Mark Karvon’s Airplanes of WWII arrived I have been fascinated by these planes and with thoughts of the people who flew them. I’ve heard stories about warplanes of WWII having been piloted by women but had yet to investigate what capacity of piloting they really did and why it wasn’t in any of the history I had been taught in school regarding WWII.

As it turns out, women were pilots in WWII! The first squadron of twenty-five women was commissioned under Jacqueline Cochran at the request of the British to ferry airplanes for the British Air Transport Auxiliary. At the same time, in the United States, Nancy Harkness Love began recruiting women to ferry planes for the Air Transport Command.

In November of 1942 at the Municipal Airport in Houston, TX training began for the first class of 319th WFTD with Cochran as the commander. This class was known as the “guinea pigs”. In 1943 the name was changed to Women’s Airforce Service Pilots-WASPS!

Training consisted of 210 flight hours and 285 hours of ground school, taking seven months to complete. The 1,074 woman graduates went on to ferry 12,650 planes. “Half of all fighters planes manufactured were ferried by the WASPS who flew over sixty million miles. Thirty-eight of these women gave their lives serving their country.”

These women not only ferried the planes but tested new and repaired planes, which was extremely dangerous. They taught male pilots how to fly the new planes, towed targets, flew tracking, smoke-laying, staffing and simulated bombing missions!

These “guinea pigs” had to pay all of their own expenses, which included room and board, and their own way to Texas. Thirty-five years after being deactivated, in 1977 the US government finally gave the WASPs honorable discharges and veterans’ benefits.

WOW! Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “You go girl” doesn’t it!!!

Happy Puzzling!