There’s a recycling center near the library where I work, and they rarely have puzzles, but occasionally, I find some treasure like this. It’s a vintage Schmidt, maybe from the 70s, with large and very sturdy pieces. I also think it’s the first western-themed puzzle I’ve ever done. Three pieces missing, but I don’t mind, this was a blast.
This was my first puzzle in the Cobble Hill Rainbow Collection, and I have to say it was not as enjoyable as I was hoping it would be. Turns out, I wasn’t in the mood for a puzzle with such small details, I think I would have preferred some larger objects. There was also a small quality issue with many pieces stuck together to another piece, and in many cases it wasn’t possible to separate the pieces without damaging them.
I really liked the clock and the water melon:
The word pink appeared in many languages, including Finnish (“vaaleanpunainen”):
This was just as much fun as it looks. I always enjoy vintage ads, and there’s plenty of that here, although Pepsi and Coca Cola are the only brands I actually recognized. Master Pieces quality varies a lot, but this puzzle was ok.
This is the third and last of the puzzles I recently borrowed from a friend. It’s another Curiosi, and this time I assembled it in the frame, and I also used the box image.
On the box, there is the word “palapeli”, which means jigsaw puzzle in Finnish (literally, it means “piece game”). This seemed a bit strange, because Curiosi is a German brand, and it’s unlikely that they would customize their boxes for the Finnish market. I had a look, and it says palapeli on many of their boxes – they’ve named a series of puzzles after the Finnish word! I think that’s kind of cool. Here’s a photo of the box (it’s about the size of an LP, older readers will know what I mean):
Another borrowed puzzle, and another new to me German brand. Like Curiosi, Philos is also located about 100 km east of Dortmund, this time in Paderborn. There seems to be a lot of small puzzle companies around, I need to start paying more attention!
Anyway, this is a wooden puzzle, with very thick, although strangely light pieces. The cut seemed a bit rough in places, and there were a few identical pieces that I managed to place wrong, but it was still a nice puzzle to do.
There were some whimsies, but not all that many. Here are the ones I could find:
While the brand is clearly Philos, it also says “Artifact Wooden Puzzle” on the box, which I find a bit misleading, since there is a US wooden puzzle brand called Artifact Puzzles. I’ve had the pleasure of doing and Artifact puzzle, and this is nowhere near as good as those, although it was still an enjoyable puzzle.
This lovely puzzle was loaned to me by a friend. The brand is Curiosi, a German brand that I’ve never come across before. They’re located in Halle (Westfalen), which is only about 100 km east of Dortmund, but this was actually bought in Finland, at the Heureka Science Centre.
It was only 211 pieces, but I did this without looking at the box, and the cut made it quite tricky:
The puzzle came with a frame that you could assemble the puzzle in, but I just did it on the table without using the frame. I came to regret this when I had to wrangle the puzzle into frame afterwards, as you can imagine, this puzzle is nohwere near fully interlocking, so moving the whole puzzle was pretty difficult.
The back of the frame has a stand, or you can mount it on a wall.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any mention of an artist, either on the box or on the Curiosi website. Very enjoyable little puzzle, though.
Puzzler1909 