PUZZILLA.ORG

When I was a child in the 1960's my mother wanted to do genealogy. Her pedigree was already filled in by other researchers before her, so she learned genealogy by working on descendant lines. She began with a long sheet of butcher paper, a yardstick, and a sharp pencil, and drew a descendants chart for her Warriner line. She posted a classified ad in the newspaper where her ancestors once lived and invited people with a certain last name to contact her, without saying what it was about. Then she traveled to meet with them, share her chart, and ask them to help her fill in what they knew, and she would give them an updated copy including what she knew. She found thousands of relatives that way, before the internet, before the personal computer, and made a lot of friends--her living cousins.

Puzzilla.org replaces the butcher paper and pencil. It draws mesmerizing circle-tree descent charts with many hundreds of cousins in seconds, using records from the FamilyTree database. It reveals where others' research stopped, where new research can begin. Many thousands find their pedigree is full like my mother, and have used Puzzilla to find new uncharted territory and learned how to do real research.

Puzzilla's Premium Features help users view the quality of their tree. This is essential where the tree is a collaborative effort as it is for FamilyTree. The Sources button spots records that lack sources, the Hints button takes you to pre-matched historic records to look for new evidence, and the Possible Duplicates buttons shows potential merges to prevent duplication. The My Changes button shows the records that the user personally created or changed, the Search button finds records matching a name, place, or birthdate range, and the Targets button spotlights records where new research opportunities may be hiding.

Video--How To Puzzilla: The Puzzilla experience includes viewing the How To Puzzilla video (https://puzzilla.org/videos/BasicTraining/ ) which has introduced many thousands of new researchers this past year to the basic concepts of genealogy using Puzzilla in the FamilyTree/FamilySearch environment (15 minutes, the Innovator's Challenge video is a subset)

Built With

• bootstrap
• d3.js
• familysearch
• familytree-apis
• jade
• javascript
• node.js
• saas