There are lot of puzzles with paintings by Thomas Kinkade, but I think this is the first I’ve done. I got it cheap (3 EUR for a factory sealed copy), but I was expecting it to be really difficult. It wasn’t, really, and my dislike of green vegetation seems to be mostly about photographic images. The great quality helped too, of course. Like many Schmidt puzzles, it had a rather tight fit, which is pleasant while assembling, but a bit annoying when taking the puzzle apart. Anyway, I loved it!
My first puzzle from Ravensburger’s Nature Edition series, and I found it very enjoyable and relaxing.
I bought the puzzle used, and when I opened it, I thought I would have a pre-sorted puzzle:
It didn’t turn out quite like that, but the bags and trays were some help. One of the trays contained maybe 80 % of the edge pieces, and one of the bags had almost all of the bridge pieces, but otherwise, the bags and trays seemed rather mixed. Anyway, it was some help, and I did this one from top to bottom, starting with the sky and finishing with the bridge.
A mystery puzzle from the 80s (it says 1984 on the box)! There’s a story: a chauffeur to the rich and famous is writing a tell-all book, and Jessica Fletcher is helping with the editing, but of course the chauffeur ends up dead. There are some suspects, and Jessica gives us three tings to look for (or prove) in order to find the murderer. I could only work out one, but it was still great fun. The solution was inverted, so that you had to read it in a mirror 🙂
The puzzle itself was pretty dark, and Paul Lamond Games is not exactly great quality, but at 550 pieces it was OK. You can have a peek at the image here.
Hurray for Puzzles! recently made me aware that Heye has posted some upcoming puzzles on their webpage. There is still no full catalog for 2023. At least three of the puzzles (on the second page, so probably entered earlier than the rest) are already available, and this puzzle is one of them. The date on the bag was in June 2022, but the puzzle is not in the 2022 catalog, and neither are the other two puzzles that I got.
Anyway, this is an installment in Andy Kehoe’s Inner Mystic series. Like other puzzles in the series, they are not the easiest puzzles, but also not as hard as they look. I loved this, and I was happy to see Heye back to a proper grid cut with no false fits after another new Heye had a strange mix of grid and ribbon cut.
Very busy image of Amsterdam, with lots of funny details, but pretty difficult. This one was on the table for a full week (it was also a week where I spent most of Wednesday to Sunday at a film festival).
Some of the children were wearing crowns, so there’s probably some local holiday going on. Google brought up the opening of parliament in September, Prinsjedag (prince day?), as a possible candidate.
This was my favourite detail in the puzzle! Frans Le Roux gives a nod to fellow Dutch artist Jan van Haasteren, who is known to always include a shark fin in his images. Van Haasteren is, of course, a prolific artist for Jumbo puzzles.
The title is in French, and as far as I can make out, it means “The Nest Lucky Charme”. I love the image, but it was much more difficult than I expected. Not as bad as my previous puzzle by the same artists 🙂 It took a while to get into, but I did enjoy it in the end.
My last puzzle in Dortmund for a long while, I’m now in Helsinki, and will stay here for a few months. The puzzle is part of the Trefl Crazy Shapes series, and it was a lot of fun, probably the best of the images I’ve done. Loved it!
This painting by Danish artist Carl Bloch from 1866 was rather entertaining as a puzzle. The characters are looking at someone, and the man looks suspicious. The women look interested, but like they’re trying not to let it show. My first thought was that this is the kind of looks you would get if you start taking photos of strangers 🙂 The artist has also painted himself into the picture, he is sitting with his back turned at the smaller table in the background, and one of the other men is his friend who commissioned this painting.
Not the easiest 500-piece puzzle I’ve ever done, but still enjoyable. The only part that was easy was the text.
Collage of famous buildings from around the world. Preposterous in its way, but great fun. This was also the tightest Ravensburger fit that I’ve ever had. It was fine while doing the puzzle, but tedious to take apart.
One of the first things I noticed about the image was that there is no Neuschwanstein – but I was wrong:
There it is again, the building that has been called the most popular puzzle subject in the world – it certainly is in Europe.
Puzzler1909 