This was so much fun! Another Hidden Shapes puzzle from Trefl, but this was much easier than my first one. While I enjoy having strangely shaped pieces, I felt that this image was so easy that I really didn’t pay much attention to piece shape, the colours and patterns were enough.
After I finished, I pulled out the 10 shapes:
Given the subject, I’m sure the UFO on the bottom should really be a mushroom, but a UFO is more entertaining 🙂
This is a painting from ca. 1516 by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. If I didn’t know how old this painting actually is , I would find it very hard to date, there is something ageless about Bosch.
I was quite pleased with myself for recognizing the scenes on the left (Adam and Eve being thrown out of Paradise), but then I assumed the central piece was some sort of harvest festival. I should have known better, it actually depicts people engaging in various sins, and on the right there is hell, where all the sinning leads to.
By the way, a haywain is a hay wagon – I had to look it up.
After a slightly disappointing puzzle, I chose one that is pretty much disappointment proof. Lots of text, food, and silly word games. I loved it!
It seems almost impossible to choose a favourite, but that stack of pancakes with “I regret nothing” really resonates with me 🙂
Doro Göber and Peter Knorr have done several cartoon cities for Heye, but this is the first I’ve done. This is definitely a Dutch city, and most likely Amsterdam. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this as much as I expected to. It wasn’t the puzzle, it was me, the puzzle is fine, and has lots of interesting details.
I also found a football reference: on the newspaper boat, it says “Oranje in de finale”, The Orange in the final. Oranje usually means the Dutch national football team, and they were in the world cup final in South Africa in 2010 (they lost to Spain). On the larger boat you can also see fans dressed in orange.
Another installment in the “My Haven” series with imaged by Steve Read. Nice, but I would have preferred a bit more colour.
This was my first Zee puzzle, and I was not optimistic about the quality, but it turned out out to be all right. There’s a good mix of piece shapes and I had no problems with false fits. The pieces are a bit on the thin side, but OK. Overall, it reminds me of Trefl. The box was big enough to hold 2000 pieces.
This was easier than I expected. I did the text first, then everything that wasn’t blue, and finally the sky, progressing from light to darker blue. Great fun!
I must say, the quality of the poster seems to match the quality of the movie. Especially poor Vampira looks off:
Incidentally, Vampira was portrayed by Maila Nurmi, whose family had emigrated to the US from Finland.
Another adorable Zozoville monster. The note on the jar says “2 weeks quarantine”. I love those bunny slippers!
As it happens, I do have the next three weeks off, and I have no plans, which is the best kind of holiday.
This great image by Loup is part of this year’s releases, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the first release of this image as puzzle. Great fun, of course!
The title is a play on words, because flea market in Finnish is “kirpputori”, but here the last part “tori” (market) has been replaced by Thor, a god in Norse mythology. The image is from a children’s book in the Tatu and Patu series (I wrote about Tatu and Patu here).
Busy images often lead to me spending too much time looking at the box, but here it was more “Ooh, I just saw the other half of this lamp”, followed by a happy reunion. This was a perfect image, and I enjoyed it immensely despite crappy Peliko quality with false fits.
Prisma is a chain of hypermarkets in Finland, belonging to the S-group. They’ve recently put out a series of puzzles manufactured by Tactic. This is absolutely the best of the images, the others are black and white. The quality was also much better than I have seen from Tactic lately, no risk of placing a piece wrong, and the finish is very pleasant. I really don’t understand why Tactic keeps putting out subpar puzzles, they are clearly capable of doing much better.
Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip to Freiburg, because I got sick. Probably not Corona, the two tests I’ve done were negative, but still really annoying.
Puzzler1909 