Ruppersberg's own collection has been a primary source of material for his artwork. It is a vast and ever-expanding collection, a wide-ranging archive of material including pulp fiction, comic books, vanity press publications, industrial and educational films, posters and an assortment of ephemera and objects of a certain nostalgia including the original "Fishing is Fun" a puzzle from the 50s on which this puzzle and its box are based. One wall of Ruppersberg's collection, as it was installed in his former New York studio, is pictured on the cover of the "Fishing is Fun" puzzle box and on one side of the puzzle. On the other side of the puzzle are a series of brief observations -- a puzzle in text -- describing two individuals who have influenced Ruppersberg as an artist: Raymond Roussel, and the Unknown Soldier.

In choosing to make a puzzle, Ruppersberg allows the viewer, the puzzler, to take on his role as an artist. Like the artist, the puzzler must fish about amongst the pieces of Ruppersberg's studio in order to construct a work, assembling hidden influences on the reverse while doing so. But, as Perec understands and describes so well, the role of the puzzle-maker is complicated. "Despite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzle-maker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated and decided by the other." Puzzler or puzzle-maker? It is Ruppersberg's particular genius as an artist to be both.

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