ALDEN - Richard Gontarz recently became one of only a few Americans to complete the world's largest jigsaw puzzle, which comes with 18,240 pieces and weighs 40 pounds.

Well, almost completed.

The last piece - which goes in a corner of the puzzle - disappeared after the family beagle, Buddy, got into Nathan's bedroom and did some chewing.

He's still searching his son's bedroom for the last piece, after spending nearly 1,000 hours on the puzzle over the past 10 months.

His wife, Danette, hopes to find the missing piece before Thanksgiving.

That's when their son, Nathan, comes home from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he is a junior.

“I called the supplier and told them I was done but I was missing one piece,” Gontarz said. “They were impressed. They said I was the first one this year to complete it. They're going to send me another piece of cardboard with the gold border and I'm going to cut it to size and put it in. Unless we find the piece Buddy took.”

Produced by Ravensburger of Germany, the puzzle reproduces four maps of the world going back to the 16th and 17th centuries. The company sells only four or five of the puzzles a year and estimates that about eight to 10 people have completed this one since 2001.

Gontarz, 45, has done puzzles for 20 years, some with 5,000 and 9,000 pieces. But this one almost got away from him.

“There were days when I spent two or three hours and got only one piece in,” he said, “and then the next day I put in 300 to 400 pieces. And then I found out that pieces are interchangeable - they'd fit perfectly, and I didn't know until I was almost done that they didn't go there.”

Gontarz works from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. at Brill Buffalo in Lancaster, which makes fillings and glazes for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Tim Hortons shops.

What do his friends say about his hobby?

“People ask me how I have time. My answer is that everyone has the same amount of time in a day, and everyone chooses to do what they want to do. And I choose to do this.”

It isn't like Gontarz doesn't have a life. He has been active with the Boy Scouts for 15 years. Last year, he ran for mayor of Alden and received 99 votes, losing to Michael Kubik, his neighbor, who won with 200.

But something else keeps Gontarz going with big jigsaw puzzles. It's his daughter, Stephanie, who was 14 when she died in a traffic accident in 2002.

“I know she would have been proud,” Gontarz said, “because she helped me with puzzles when she was growing up.”

His wife agrees.

“I think it is therapeutic,” she said. “It helps keep her memory fresh and alive. He can think of her when he's doing it.”