On 2 June 1999, Hamleys of Regent Street, London – the finest toyshop in the world – will be the venue for the international launch of ETERNITY, the 209-piece jigsaw with the £1 million prize - equivalent to US$1.6 million, or 2 billion Italian lire. UK stockists of ETERNITY include Hamleys, WH Smith, Woolworths, Argos, Tesco, and Toys-R-Us.

The first person to fit all 209 fiendish puzzle pieces into the 12-sided "British threepenny-piece" regular-dodecagon frame with no gaps or overlaps, like a jigsaw, will win the prize of £1 million. The prize, offered by the Racing-Champions Ertl company, the manufacturers, is covered by prize indemnity insurance on the London market.

The £1 million prize is the biggest ever offered for solving a jigsaw puzzle. But then, ETERNITY is no ordinary jigsaw. There’s no picture. Each piece is double-sided: it could go either way up. Each piece could go next to any of the other 208 pieces. Each piece might be an outside-edge piece - or it might not. But there is a solution: the secret map is held in a vault accessible only to the underwriters’ loss-adjusters.

ETERNITY has been designed so that it can be solved by humans but it cannot be solved by computers or higher math. Nerds need not apply: ETERNITY is a physical demonstration of an NP-complete complex problem. An 8-year-old has as much chance as an adult of developing the skill and insight to solve ETERNITY. If you want to win the £1 million, you’ll need grit, determination, drive and the blend of intuition, ingenuity, inspiration and initiative which is the hallmark of human genius. You have 3 years to solve ETERNITY.

ETERNITY is not for the faint-hearted. It’s difficult. But the Racing-Champions Ertl Company, who have been in the international toy business for half a century, are offering some secret clues to signpost the way to victory for the struggling solver. Three smaller puzzles – the 10-piece METEOR, the 14-piece DELTA-WING and the beautiful, romantic 20-piece HEART, are also on sale worldwide from 2 June. Send in your solution to each of these puzzles and the manufacturers will tell you where up to two pieces of the 209-piece ETERNITY puzzle fit. You don’t have to solve the smaller puzzles to solve the big one – but they do help. ETERNITY will retail for around £29.99.

The inventor of ETERNITY is Christopher Monckton, an eccentric Scots laird, heir to a soon-to-be-abolished peerage dating all the way back to 1957, ex-adviser to Margaret Thatcher in the days when the Tories won elections, demon biker, author, journalist and broadcaster, known for his sparky TV appearances on programmes from Thursday Night Live to The Clive James Show. Christopher Monckton will be at Hamleys (in his kilt) for the June 2 launch from 10.00am onwards, UK time. Then he’ll be on a worldwide promotional tour.