Work Out- Turkish puzzle ring

By Nancy Leasman of Long Prairie

I lost the Turkish puzzle ring I had worn on my right pinky finger for about 20 years. It was a gift from my middle child. It had replaced one my brother had given me in high school – one I had also lost.

A Turkish puzzle ring is made of interlocking rings, usually four but sometimes eight, that when assembled form one ring. Legend has it that a ring such as this was also a loyalty or fidelity ring. Given by a man to a woman who, if she removed it for a forbidden romance, would not be able to reassemble it and it would thereby reveal her indiscretion. Women are smarter than that and, obviously, able to figure out how to reassemble the ring, or proactively, to use a thread to tie the rings together when removing it.

My ability to put a puzzle ring together came in handy many years ago when I stopped in at an artisan jewelry store. A female customer there seemed in distress as the jeweler attempted to reassemble an eight-band gold ring studded with sapphires and rubies. He was having little success, so I offered to help. One of the eight rings had been bent in a previous assembly attempt (the woman admitted that many people had tried) and after realizing that, I tweaked the shape of that one and, fairly quickly, positioned the rings in pairs and then used my usual method to interlock them back into position. As I left the store, wondering about that legend of the rings, the jeweler was soldering the rings together.

I think I lost my first puzzle ring when I was washing a car. It must have slipped off in the bucket of water. I didn’t realize the ring was missing until later, and though I looked, I couldn’t find it.

My second puzzle ring, silver like the first, was made of more delicate material. It was a little trickier to assemble than my first one, not because the shapes of the rings were different, but simply because the fineness of the material made the shapes less easy to see. Over the years, it wore a groove in my finger where it settled comfortably. The groove helped keep it on my pinky.

The day it went missing, I had driven to town, gone to a meeting, had coffee, and come back home. When I discovered the ring was gone, I checked the car, the garage, the house, and the next time I went to town, I retraced my steps there. No one had found a little jumble of wire since that is what it would have looked like. I even shook out my right glove, thinking the ring may have come off in the glove.

I felt bad. I liked the ring’s connection to my middle child, indirectly to my brother, and just how it fit my little finger.

Several days later, I bundled up and went for a walk. It was a brisk day and I didn’t go too far.

When I got back, I removed my gloves and heard a tinkle of metal hitting the floor. I looked down, and there at my feet was the jumble of my puzzle ring! Though I had looked for it in my glove, it had somehow stayed hidden. I hadn’t even felt it as I wore the glove.

I spent the next half hour putting the rings back together. I will not tie the rings together nor have them soldered. I like the puzzle of it and I am thrilled that it again resides on my right pinky!