This was easy and fun, with plenty of text.
You can’t quite make out the names of the flavours.
Ice Cream Shop, 2019-05-19
Month: May 2019
Horses, 2019-05-18
Not my usual style, but this was part of a lot of eight puzzles. The brand, Play Time, is not good (pieces fit where they don’t belong), but with only 250 pieces it wasn’t much of a problem.
German Champions 2011, 2012-05-22
The 2018/2019 season is over, and Dortmund ended up second, which is much better than anyone would have expected last summer. Right up until the last game on Saturday we even had a slim chance of the championship, but Bayern would have had to lose their game, and they didn’t. It was the first time in ten years that the winner was not clear before the last round.
Anyway, here’s a puzzle with Borussia Dortmund celebrating the German Championship in May, 2011. Jürgen Klopp (now at Liverpool) led a very young squad to a completely unexpected victory. Only three of the players are still playing at Dortmund (although two more are still employed by the club in other roles, and at least one more is frequently seen in the stadium…).
Ravensburger usually do a puzzle of the Bayern Munich team every year (fair enough, Ravensburg is in Bavaria, but still…), but I know of only three Dortmund puzzles from Ravensburger: there’s a 500 piece puzzle of the team from the 1997/1998 season, there’s this, and then there’s a 1000 piece puzzle of the team from 2017/2018 (well OK, there are a few puzzle balls as well).
This is the only Ravensburger team puzzle (Dortmund or Bayern) that is not a boring portrait with the team organized in rows, which is just one reason why I love this puzzle. It really captures something of the celebrations, you can see how happy the team is, and below on the left the fans are holding up a choreo, while in the middle Kloppo is being thrown into the air. Obviously, the puzzle wasn’t available straight away, and by the time I completed it, in May 2012, Dortmund were already celebrating the next championship as well as winning the domestic cup (DFB-Pokal), the so called double. Unfortunately, Ravensburger didn’t see fit to mark the occasion.
Overall, I think Ravensburger could do much, much better with German football. There are occasionally puzzles of other teams (all of the players-in-orderly-rows type), but mostly it’s just Bayern. Instead of the team portraits they could do something more dynamic, like highlights of the season (perhaps even with some text). I would also love to see a series with German stadiums.
Paradise Sunset, In Progress (5)
I was actually supposed to stay in Dortmund for a couple of weeks, but some things came up at work, and I had to come back to Helsinki for a couple of days. I managed to get some hours in on Paradise Sunset:
Oops, finished but no photo
Sometimes I finish a puzzle but forget to snap a photo. I found two cases where I have in-progress photos, but none of the completed puzzle.
This was the first puzzle I completed in my flat in Dortmund, but I was in such a hurry to get onto the next one that I forgot to take a photo after I finished. We also did it at work later, but I don’t have a photo from then either 🙂 It’s a nice puzzle, and I expect I will do it again one day.
The second puzzle is a bit naughty, but most of the details are missing 🙂
I did finish this, although the quality was really bad. I’ve never heard of the brand, Boxer, and I’m pretty sure they usually don’t produce jigsaw puzzles 🙂
Sadly, I see from my records that I have finished more than 70 puzzles in the last 12 years for which I have no photos 😦
Sciences, 2011-11-20
A puzzle from Heye’s Alchemy Gothic series. Unfortunately, I haven’t made a note of the artist, and I don’t have the puzzle anymore. Usually, this type of puzzle has too much dark colours for me, but this was all right. Not the easiest, but not terribly hard either. And I love the image 🙂 Too bad I didn’t keep it, actually.
World Map, 2012-06-17
A 3000-piece world map with far too much water. On old maps, they used to fill in with monsters and pictures of sea wrecks, much better than endless blue. Around the map, there are pictures of notable edifices (including Neuschwanstein, of course). Also, there’s a picture with the phases of the moon, but I can’t stop seeing it as a dial on an old telephone 😀
Ice Cream Shop, In Progress
After the last Kaj Stenvall puzzle, I felt I needed something a lot easier, and turned to this Ravensburger 1500 piece puzzle with an ice cream shop. Some text, and plenty of variety. I expect this to be easy, but I’ve been wrong before 🙂
The Spirit and the Material of the Bottle, 2019-05-12
I’m in Dortmund again, and I managed to finish the latest duck-puzzle. The white/grey areas were all right, but the wall was pretty difficult, especially the last 200 pieces. Having only the basic piece shape with no variety made it worse, but fortunately, the colour is not completely uniform, and you could also see the texture of the painting.
I checked my other puzzles in the series, and of the ones I have, there’s only one more of the “only two tabs opposite” type, and that’s not as difficult as this one. There are a couple with a lot of white, though …
Black or White, 2009-04-15
Great puzzle by my favourite artist Marino Degano. A keeper, obviously.
Puzzler1909 