Well, it did not take long for the first missing piece of 2024 to turn up, or rather, not to turn up (it’s a bit difficult to see, in a palm tree on the left). I seem to be having a some bad luck with missing pieces lately. Otherwise, the puzzle was enjoyable and I really liked the colours. It’s part of the Trefl Crazy Shapes-series, where starting with the edges is not an option, as you can see.
For my puzzle challenge, this will be #13, Moonlight.
A Finnish Facebook group that I’m in does a yearly puzzle challenge. There’s a list with 30 items, and you should complete one puzzle for each item. There is no prize, or indeed any rules, you can decide for yourself if you want to count the same puzzle for different categories, and items can be loosely interpreted. For example, item #1, Human anatomy, is probably going to be sugar skulls for me 🙂
Anyway, here’s the list for 2024:
| 1. Human anatomy |
| 2. Jetty |
| 3. Dream |
| 4. Gradient |
| 5. A Pearl in my collection |
| 6. Fruit |
| 7. Africa |
| 8. Party |
| 9. Done without looking at the image |
| 10. Pieces are smaller than usual |
| 11. The puzzle somehow illustrates my personality or me |
| 12. My favourite brand |
| 13. Moonlight |
| 14. Fox |
| 15. Religious building |
| 16. Game |
| 17. Disney/Fantasy |
| 18. (Vintage) Educational poster |
| 19. Yellow |
| 20. Vehicle that I’ve travelled in |
| 21. Vehicle that I’ve never travelled in / would like to travel in |
| 22. Thre are letters in the puzzle |
| 23. Out of the comfort zone |
| 24. Fits no item on the list |
| 25. At least one piece missing |
| 26. Shaped puzzle |
| 27. Forest |
| 28. 2 puzzles from the same series (1) |
| 29. 2 puzzles from the same series (2) |
| 30. A puzzle released in 2024 |
Last year, I finished the challenge in March, I think, but I plan on going much slower this year 🙂
In addition, there’s a monthly extra challenge, and for January that is “dragon”.
Back to the Stenvall ducks. This was number 21/30, and I hope to be able to finish the rest of them this year. Puzzle quality was nice, although with a very loose fit. Only the dark area on top was a bit challenging.
I’m not a huge fan of Falcon, because even though the pieces are sturdy and there’s a good mix of piece shapes, it is prone to the odd false fit. But then again, I cannot resist vintage trams, and I’m not sorry I got this. It was a bit more difficult than expected, but enjoyable throughout.
Lovely little puzzle, and very fast to do. It says Made in the Czech Republic on the box, but the quality is the same as with Ravensburg produced in Germany.
The fit and cut is the same as with the previous Cherry Pazzi puzzle (that is to say excellent, except for the boring piece shapes), but there’s been a bit of a production snafu with this one – two pieces in the bottom left corner have doubles, and one piece is missing (on the left, between Neptune and Earth). I guess when you get a great quality puzzle for a very good price, some economies may have been made in production. I’ll still buy Cherry Pazzi puzzles, although perhaps not 500 piece puzzles (because of the boring cut).
I’m not sure if I’ve just been unlucky, of if there really are a lot more cases like this lately. Have you had more new puzzles with extra or missing pieces lately?
The second of the Star Trek Clementonis I got was thankfully complete, and a lot of fun to do. It was more difficult than I anticipated to know which piece belonged to which face, but still a fairly easy puzzle.
Clementoni has put out more 500 piece puzzles in VHS-type packaging, including some Star Trek images. This was otherwise lovely, but as you can see, there are 12 pieces missing in the bottom left corner. Looks like someone took a little bite out of the puzzle. I actually noticed that there are missing pieces really late, because I didn’t start with the edges, and got to the bottom left corner quite late. Oh well, these things happen.
So, time for my statistical round-up of 2023. In 2023, I completed 130 puzzles, and placed 120 000 pieces, down from the previous year’s all time high (145 puzzles and 134 854 pieces). There were again no really large puzzles, the biggest I did was 2000 pieces. Here’s the breakdown by piece count:
| Pieces | Puzzles | % |
| 1000 | 86 | 66% |
| 500 | 21 | 16% |
| 1500 | 5 | 4% |
| 2000 | 5 | 4% |
| 300 | 4 | 3% |
| 750 | 3 | 2% |
| 211 | 2 | 2% |
| 173 | 1 | 1% |
| 360 | 1 | 1% |
| 600 | 1 | 1% |
| 995 | 1 | 1% |
| Total Result | 130 | 100% |
Next the breakdown for brands, where Clementoni has passed Heye for number two with quite a margin, and the Ravenburger percentage is higher than ever.
| Brand | Puzzles | % |
| Ravensburger | 35 | 27% |
| Clementoni | 21 | 16% |
| Heye | 9 | 7% |
| Schmidt | 8 | 6% |
| Tactic | 8 | 6% |
| King | 6 | 5% |
| Eurographics | 5 | 4% |
| Castorland | 3 | 2% |
| Cherry Pazzi | 3 | 2% |
| Cobble Hill | 3 | 2% |
| New York Puzzle Company | 3 | 2% |
| Piatnik | 3 | 2% |
| Curiosi | 2 | 2% |
| D-Toys | 2 | 2% |
| Enjoy | 2 | 2% |
| Jumbo | 2 | 2% |
| Trefl | 2 | 2% |
| Aquarius | 1 | 1% |
| Art Puzzle | 1 | 1% |
| eeBoo | 1 | 1% |
| Falcon | 1 | 1% |
| Gibsons Puzzle | 1 | 1% |
| Grafika | 1 | 1% |
| JaCaRou | 1 | 1% |
| Landauf Landab Verlag | 1 | 1% |
| Laurence King Publishing | 1 | 1% |
| Master Pieces | 1 | 1% |
| Philos | 1 | 1% |
| Pieces & Peace | 1 | 1% |
| Pomegranate | 1 | 1% |
In a surprise to no one, I again failed to acquire less pieces than I placed – for the 120 000 placed pieces, I acquired 150 006 new ones. Sigh. I was doing really well, but then there were a lot of amazing sales starting in October, and the wheels came off again. Maybe this year?
Happy New Year!
My second Cherry Pazzi puzzle. The fit is still excellent, and the cut is nice and precise (no false fits), but unfortunately, all the pieces have the basic shape with two tabs opposite. Too bad, but it was still an enjoyable puzzle.
Puzzler1909 