A butterfly is the right shape for an alphabet puzzle because it is symmetrical. Once a child has worked out that the left wing answers the right one, half the puzzle stops being guesswork. The letters run in an arc around each wing, so the alphabet is not laid out in a line to be recited — it has to be found.

Every letter from A to Z is cut on its own piece, and the pieces interlock with each other rather than dropping into a tray. That is the difference between this and a peg board. There is no outline to fall back on, so a child has to read the shape of the notch and the colour of the neighbour, and the puzzle stays interesting well past the age at which a tray puzzle is finished in ten seconds.

Because the pieces lock together, the completed butterfly holds its shape when it is lifted and stands upright on a flat surface. Children who have just finished it usually want it on a shelf rather than back in the box, and the piece thickness makes that possible — the wings do not sag or fall apart when it is stood on its lower edge.

The colours are strong and repeat around the wings, which gives a younger child a second way in. Before letters mean anything, a two or three year old can be asked to find all the red pieces, or to match the yellow one on the left wing to the yellow one on the right. The same puzzle then becomes a letter-hunt a year later.

The body carries the middle of the alphabet and the wings carry the ends, so a child who knows the song still has to think about where each letter physically goes. A useful way to start is to place A, M, N and Z first, then fill between them — it turns the alphabet into a map rather than a list.

No age or size is printed on the puzzle. We suggest three years and up, with an adult nearby for younger children, because a single letter piece is small enough to go in a mouth. The Safencia price is Rs. 2,500 with Cash on Delivery across Pakistan, including Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

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