Jigsaw Puzzle (Solution)

by Yuri Lin and Daniel Zaharopol, with ideas contributed by David Reiley and technical assistance by Ben Buchwald

You were given the pieces to 49 49-piece jigsaw puzzles (7x7), each cut exactly the same way so that pieces of the 49 puzzles are interchangeable. We removed one piece from each puzzle, each from a different location so that the missing pieces would be able to be pieced together into another complete puzzle. If you reassemble the 49 puzzles, you will discover which piece was missing from each puzzle. The completed jigsaw puzzles can be downloaded here.

Each missing piece has letters on it which you should be able to determine by the pieces surrounding the missing piece in the reassembled puzzles, as shown in the image below:

If you read off the letters from the missing pieces in the order you would fit them all together, it reads:

FOWL THINGS OFTEN FOUND IN SMALL PACKAGES STUFFED INTO BODY CAVITIES OR PURCHASED SEPARATELY USEFUL FOR MAKING GRAVY OR STEW AMONG OTHER FOODS

The answer to this clue phrase is: GIBLETS.