The trunk is the piece every child picks up first. It curls away from the body as a single red hook, it looks nothing like the rest of the puzzle, and it carries the letter A — so the alphabet has an obvious starting point that a four year old finds without being shown.

After that the puzzle gets harder in a useful way. The elephant stands on four separate legs, and the gaps between them mean the bottom row of pieces has fewer neighbours to lock against than the broad back does. Children work top-down almost every time: the back and head come together quickly, then the legs take as long as the rest of the puzzle put together.

Twenty-six pieces cover A to Z. B sits behind the trunk on the face, the middle of the alphabet fills the body and back, and the last letters run down into the feet. Because the shape is wide and low, the letters are spread across two directions rather than following a single line, which is the part that makes it a thinking puzzle rather than a memory one.

There is no tray and no printed outline. The pieces interlock with each other, so the only guidance is the cut of the notch, the colour block beside it and the letter itself. That keeps it usable at five and six, long after a peg-and-hole board has stopped being interesting.

Assembled, it holds together when lifted and stands on its four feet. The colours are strong blocks of red, blue, green and orange rather than a gradient, so a child who is not reading yet can still be given a real job — find the four blue pieces, or find the piece with the eye on it — while an older sibling works the letters.

Nothing on the puzzle states an age or a size. We suggest three years and up, with an adult nearby for a younger child, because a 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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