(Photo by Nancy Taylor) Washington County Public Defender Ray Smith completed a 42,000 piece puzzle.

There are certain boundaries of recreational sanity Ray Smith just won’t cross. Jigsaw puzzles that have 60,000 pieces, for instance.

“That’s just insane,” he says, all the while looking at the 42,000-piece puzzle of world landmarks that took him seven months to finish.

The puzzle is displayed on the floor of the Marietta Municipal Court entrance area, and it’s big enough that it looks like a decorative rug. The puzzle is there because Smith is Washington County’s Senior Assistant Public Defender and he “knows people” in the building, namely Municipal Court Judge Janet Dyar Welch. Welch discovered Smith’s big-puzzle hobby several years ago and suggested he use the space.

“I didn’t know that was an option,” he said. “But her letting me do that is absolutely fabulous.”

He has displayed a couple of 40,000-piece Disney puzzles there, one with various Disney movie scenes and one of “Mickey Mouse Through the Years.” But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

“The first one I did, they swept it, they thought it was a rug. They sucked up pieces from it.” He assembles the puzzles at home in seven sections. He works with a bag for each section, then puts them together.

“There are people who mix up the pieces from all seven bags,” he said. “That’s utter insanity, too.”

So, what’s really the difference between Smith being “sane” with 42,000 pieces and someone else going over the edge with 60,000?

It’s a matter of perspective. The seven bags with 6,000 pieces are a challenge but manageable to him, and the pieces in one bag all go in the same part of the puzzle.

Plus, he knows The Secret. There’s a certain shaped piece that repeats itself in a pattern, he says. He gets down on his knees and counts, to prove his point. In his current work, “Around the World,” that special piece is every 37 pieces across and 28 pieces up.

But don’t most puzzle pieces basically look alike?

“Some of the cheaper puzzles, maybe. But not these Educas (the brand name),” he said, adding he figures that he spent about $600 for the current puzzle.

He assembles in his basement, blocked off from the dogs.

A beloved Bichon Frise named Casper, who is now interred ashes, was the one largely responsible for eating about 11 pieces out of each section of his earlier 24,000-piece puzzle.

He now has two golden retrievers “and they’ll eat anything.”

He said the current work of world landmarks did present some additional anguish.

“Mt. Rushmore and the Pyramids, they were pretty difficult. The tan color drove me nuts. I don’t have any trouble with blue sky pieces, but the tan….”

Smith finds the gargantuan puzzles to be relaxing, and his wife, Mary Beth, is quite supportive.

For example, she helped him put the contact paper on the back of “Around the World” so the pieces would be more likely to stay in place.

“She reinforces the behavior,” he said.

Nancy Taylor can be reached at ntaylor@newsandsentinel.com