Month: December 2019

Happy 2000, 2019-12-27

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This is the best New Year puzzle I’ve ever seen. It was released in 1999 (as you can probably guess from the title), and I originally bought it 20 years ago. Unfortunately, I lost that puzzle (I still don’t know what happened to it), but earlier this year I bought another copy (still factory sealed). I’m not going into how much I paid, but I’m not sorry! I still loved every piece of this great puzzle, and I’m going to take better care of it this time. I wish Heye still used Jabo, he’s done some great images. I also see no reason why this puzzle shouldn’t still be in print, it would be great for any new year, not just 2000.

I did most of the bottle first, then onto the fireworks and the “Happy New Year” text.

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Happy 2000 by Jabo, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on December 27th, 2019.

There are lots of great details. Here are some unconventional spacecraft as well as the more familiar Enterpolice, with a pointy-eared pilot at the helm.

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Some devils are partying with fiery drinks …img_20191227_190628

… and the Rolling Bones perform.img_20191227_190636

Someone’s been abducted, but at least the aliens look nice.img_20191227_190657

The text and fireworks glow in the dark, but it’s incredibly hard to get good photos of that. This is the best I could do, the right half looks good, but it’s still blurry on the left.

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Happy New Year!

Main Street, 2019-12-21

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My first New York Puzzle Company Puzzle! There’s one piece missing (an edge piece on the right), which isn’t much of a surprise since this is one of the puzzles that were brought into the library. I’ve realized that one reason why so many puzzles that our library users do are missing pieces is that the cleaning staff use these big machines when they clean the floors, so if you drop a piece and don’t notice, that piece is probably a goner.

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The New Yorker: Main Street by Beatrice Tobias, New York Puzzle Company, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 20th, 2019.

The cut reminded me of Sunsout, except the blades were sharper than the ones that cut the last Sunsout puzzle I did. Overall this was a very enjoyable puzzle, many old New Yorker covers make great puzzles! New York Puzzle Company-puzzles have recently become available in one of the online stores I use, so there will probably be some more of these eventually.

Santa’s Christmas Party, 2019-12-23

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This is not exactly my type of puzzle, I’m not usually a fan of traditional Christmas puzzles, and I would never have chosen this myself,  but I got it in a lot with a bunch of other puzzles. I didn’t like it much at first, but I got more into it towards the end, but if it hadn’t been a Ravensburger, I’m not sure I would have finished it.

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Santa’s Christmas Party, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 23rd, 2019.

On the box, it says “20th Anniversary Limited Edition”, but I’m not sure what that’s referring to. Not the image, because that’s copyright 2016. Then I started to imagine a series of puzzles, all called Santa’s Christmas Party, where you start out with traditional, glossy Christmas images, but over the years it grows progressively darker, ending up with elves taking meth to keep up with toy production and a drunk Santa vomiting in the punch 🙂 Yeah, I know, I’m never going to be put in charge of a series of Christmas puzzles. Because I think Hugleikur Dagsson‘s series Santa Exposed would make great puzzles (Warning! NSFW, naughty, and often gross! You have been warned!)

Anyway, since there seems to be only one puzzle called Santa’s Christmas Party, but a great many beginning with the word Santa, this probably refers to the Santa-series. They could be clearer about what anniversary this is. Also, how come Santa has time to party on Christmas?

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Nice little detail: there’s a Ravensburger puzzle among the presents.

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Merry Christmas!

 

The Messenger, 2019-12-17

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This wonderful puzzle (thank you again, Stacey!) is actually my first high-quality wooden puzzle. Because the cut is so distinctive, I looked much more at the shapes, usually, I go more my colour and image. Also, with cardboard, you push the pieces into place, but with wood, you have to sort of drop them. I’m sure I’ll be doing this again!

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The Messenger, Artifact, 313 pieces. Completed on December 17th, 2019.

I pulled out the whimsies, althoug I’m not sure I got them all. I left the Roman numerals in

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There were lots of turtles, the composite one is my favourite of all the whimsies.

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An hour glass and an alarm clock.

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There are other animals as well, including two elephants with an acacia tree in the bacjground. I think the white one on the bottom is a bird, partly because it’s part of a book called “Birds of America”. The only other title could make out was “The Silent Sky”.

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There also seems to be a “group whimsy” with two native Americans warming themselves at a fire.

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Finally, there’s another composite, with a lot of turtles standing on top of each other, and on top of it all the earth. This reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle.

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In Progress

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I have no finished puzzles to declare, but I have two on the go on the same table. Further from the camera is my New Year-puzzle (I started really early, I want to be able to finish it before the end of the year), and in the foreground an amazing wooden puzzle that I got through a swap with Stacey from My Jigsaw Journal. I couldn’t wait to get started on it, so I pushed the New Year-puzzle a bit to the side and made some space. Both of these are fantastic puzzles, and I’m enjoying myself enormously.

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New Arrivals

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I’ve been shopping again, and I’ve bought my first vintage wooden puzzle! According to the seller, it’s from the 50s and about 1000 pieces.

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There is no image on the box, but the seller had managed to find this old travel brochure with the image of this puzzle (just the image in the middle, not the areas with text above and below).

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Not only is there no image on the box, there is no information whatsoever, except on the bottom someone has written in Swedish “We are enjoying the sun and watching the Alps with binoculars.” Which is exactly what the people in the image seem to be doing. There are also some numbers, but I have no idea what they mean. The text is very faint. This is going to be interesting!

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I’ve bought some newer puzzles as well:

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This I bought used. My efforts to quit Educa once again thwarted by an irresistible image 🙂

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Castle of Horror, 2019-12-05

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I finally finished Castle of Horror, and, surprising no one, I loved it! I worked on this with no plan, and without anything resembling sorting, and it took me quite a while, but I enjoyed every minute.

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Castle of Horror by Loup, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on December 5th, 2019.

There are vampires everywhere…

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… and ghosts …

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… and witches …

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… some of whom can’t navigate very well. This is such a typical Loup detail 🙂

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This couple arriving makes me think of some many movies where clueless innocents end up in castles with vampires.

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Since this is Loup, there are of course some naughty scenes. This puzzle actually caused a bit of a stir in Finland about 10 years ago. A blogger spotted it in the toy department of a major department store in Helsinki and was horrified (“won’t someone please think of the children”). I think the image below was what set him off. Someone from the department store had to answer questions in the newspaper, but I don’t think they pulled the puzzle.

The situation only arose because sometime earlier, the department store stupidly moved all of their puzzles to the toy department, previously they had a separate section for puzzles for adults. I can just see it, “Why do we have puzzles in two locations? Puzzles are for children, anyway!”. I remember buying my 10 000-piece Garden of Earthly delights there, but sadly, it’s no longer a good place to shop for puzzles, at least if you’re over 10.

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I usually prefer to work with the image on the box rather than the poster, but I couldn’t find the box image this time (I don’t keep the triangular Heye boxes, but I cut out the image). The poster actually worked quite well when taped to my lamp 🙂

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Vintage Posters: [Paris], 2019-11-30

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A D-Toys puzzle with an old poster for a feast in Paris on August 13th, 1893. The feast took place on the Champ de Mars, where the Eiffel Tower had been erected four years earlier.

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Vintage Posters: [Paris], D-Toys, 1000 pieces. Completed on November 30th, 2019.
There was, apparently, theater and music …

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… gymnastics …

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… and a storm? Something’s throwing people and furniture around. I have no idea what sort of entertainment this is supposed to be 🙂

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