The cat is the shape children recognise fastest, and that turns out to matter for a jigsaw. A child who can already picture the finished animal — ears at the top, tail curling round the front — has a mental target to build towards, so they place pieces with intent instead of pushing them together at random.

Twenty-six pieces carry the letters A to Z. The face takes A, B, C and D, with the whiskers and eyes printed across the red and blue pieces, and the alphabet then runs back along the body and down into the tail. The tail is deliberately the last part most children finish, because it is a long curl with fewer neighbours to lean on.

This is an interlocking jigsaw, not a peg board. Nothing drops into a hole and there is no printed outline underneath. The only information a child has is the shape of the cut, the colour of the neighbouring piece and the letter itself, which is why it keeps working for a five year old who finished the tray puzzles two years ago.

Lifted, the completed cat stays together, and it lies flat on a shelf or a table with the tail wrapping round the front paws. Children tend to leave it out on display rather than break it up, which is a fair reason to buy a puzzle in a shape someone actually likes.

Around the alphabet there is a second layer of use. The face pieces alone are a good naming exercise for a two year old — ears, eyes, nose, whiskers — and the colour blocks repeat down the body, so matching by colour works long before the letters do. Older children like being timed on it, and the tail is where the seconds go.

No age or size marking is printed on this puzzle. We suggest three years and up, and an adult nearby with a younger child, because one letter piece is small enough to be a mouthing risk. The Safencia price is Rs. 2,500 with Cash on Delivery across Pakistan, including Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

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