Author: puzzler1909

I share my time between my native Helsinki (Finland) and Dortmund (Germany), where my football team Borussia Dortmund lives. This blog is about my puzzling actvities in these cities.

The World of Jane Austen, 2022-07-15

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I’ve seen puzzles in this series before (there is one about Shakespeare), but I was suspicious of the quality and they’re also expensive, so never bought one. This was lent to me by a friend, and so I finally got to try it. There’s a poster included, and on the other side of the poster there are explanations about the buildings and characters in the puzzle.

The World of Jane Austen, Laurence King Publishing, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 15, 2022.

As expected, the quality was not all that great. I’m pretty sure that if there had been large areas of one colour, it would have been a problem, but with an image like this, it was fine. The pieces were sturdy enough, but all of the same basic shape with two tabs opposite. Did I say all? Well, not quite. Bizarrely, there were two pieces that were different: one with three tabs and one with one:

I have to say, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Doesn’t exactly add up to a good mix of piece shapes 🙂

Despite the boring piece shapes, this puzzle was a blast. It came together very fast, and was a lot of fun.

Underwater Life, 2022-07-10

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I previously wrote about Trefl’s series of cardboard puzzles with whimsies, and claimed I had one. Well, it turned out I was mistaken, but that was easily fixed, of course. There are four puzzles in the Hidden Shapes series, with piece count ranging from 1003 to 1060. The actual piece counts are on the box instead of the usual “1000”.

Underwater Life, Trefl, 1060 pieces. Completed on July 10, 2022.

There are 10 whimsies, all of them composite, so that they take up a large part of the puzzle:

The whimsies seem to be sea-related, although I’m not sure what the bottom two are supposed to be:

The overall quality of the puzzle is the same as normal Trefl puzzles, that is to say good, but not exceptional. Obviously, there are quite a few pieces that are not fully interlocking, and I was wondering if that would be more annoying with a cardboard puzzle than with a wooden one since the pieces are lighter. I didn’t really feel there was any difference in that regard. Of course, you spend some time pushing pieces back together, but you do that with wooden puzzles as well. Based on this experience, I see no reason why whimsies should be exclusive to wooden puzzles, they work just as well with cardboard, and it is fun working with non-standard piece shapes.

Helsinki City Plan 1876, 2022-07-08

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Well, this turned out to be harder than I was expecting. Story of my life 🙂 The districts that are marked with colours were the easiest part, but even that wasn’t all that easy. Then there’s a lot of text, but it was so small that I had to use a magnifying glass all the time. On the right, there’s a list of notable buildings, and even a section on buildings that were being built in 1876. On the left, there’s a list of the blocks for each district (the blocks in the oldest parts of Helsinki have names in addition to numbers, and often they’re named after animals).

Helsinki City Plan 1876, Lautapelit.fi, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 8, 2022.

This is a puzzle by the in-house brand of board game store Lautapelit.fi, but it’s not their best work, unfortunately. The fit was a bit off, but not too bad, and there was a good mix of piece shapes.

The place where I live is to the north of this map, I guess that was just wilderness in 1876 🙂

Surprise!: Horses, 2022-07-03

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The Surprise series by Mordillo always consists of four panels, but the last is not on the box. If you want to see how this race ends, you can click here to see the entire image.

Surprise!: Horses by Mordillo, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 3, 2022.

This was actually a rather strange puzzling experience. After I finished the jockeys and the hedge, I couldn’t make much progress. I finished the borders, and then I had to leave for Helsinki. Usually, when you leave a puzzle for several weeks, you sort of have to start over, because you’ve forgotten (almost) everything you learned about the puzzle, but in this case, it turned out to be a good thing. When I came back last Saturday, expecting some hard work on this, it seemed much easier. The pieces just fell into place. Puzzling is strange sometimes 🙂

Omnivore, 2022-07-02

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Great image again in the Zozoville series, but this time the background was really difficult. This took me an entire week to complete, although it’s partly because it’s very hot in Finland right now, and my small mobile AC can just about cope with keeping my bedroom tolerable. This week, I have spent more time in my cool bedroom watching the tennis in Wimbledon than puzzling in my hot livingroom.

Omnivore, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 2, 2022.

This was the first of this years Heye’s, and the cut is different than what I’ve seen from Heye before. Some of the tabs are round, and some are slightly pointy – very similar to Wasgij pieces, in fact. While most of the puzzle was a normal grid cut with rows and columns matching up perfectly:

there were also some ribbon cut areas thrown in:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen (of at least noticed) types of cut being mixed like this, usually it’s one or the other. Anyway, the pieces were nice, and they definitely use the same material for the image layer as before, it felt like a Heye. There was one big problem, though. I had two false fits, both with three points of contact. Only the fact that I couldn’t find the following piece told me that it had to be wrong, but it looked really good. This is very unfortunate, as I rate precision of the cut above pretty much all else in determining the quality of a puzzle.

Moulin Rouge, 2022-06-25

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Spanish Educa is a brand that I usually avoid, because the cut is not precise enough and I often get false fits (I saw this expression for pieces fitting where they don’t belong in a FB puzzle group, and immediately adopted it). Educa is considered by many to be a premium brand, but for me, the false fits are usually a dealbreaker. That said, I have some Educa puzzles that I really like, and this was also fun and just the right amount of challenging (if the black areas had been larger, it would have been a very different story).

Moulin Rouge, Educa, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 25, 2022.

The only artist credited on the box is Viktor Shvaiko, but the background (top half) is actually from a poster by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, so they might have mentioned him, too. I’ve actually done that poster as a mini puzzle.

Herbs and Spices, 2022-06-24

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This was one of the easiest puzzles I’ve done in a long while. Picking out the pieces for the various condiments was easy, and at the end, there were few pieces left with only the dark background colour. Great fun!

Herbs and Spices, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 24, 2022.

Tom & Jerry Hall of Fame, 2022-06-23

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This was great fun, although the lack of easily identifiable sections meant it was slow at first. I didn’t really have a strategy, just spread out the pieces and started putting them together.

The yellow parchment below on the right says “Peace Treaty” – somehow, i don’t think that’s going to last 🙂

Tom & Jerry Hall of Fame, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 23, 2022.

Aurora over Iceland, 2022-06-19

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Trefl is a Polish brand that is currently trying out some new things. They now have wooden puzzles, as well as cardboard puzzles with whimsies. This is a puzzle with a fairly wild random cut and no straight edges. It was definitely more challenging than a normal puzzle with the same piece count, but I liked it. The finished puzzle is as big as a usual 1000-piece puzzle.

Aurora over Iceland, Trefl, 600 pieces. Completed on June 19, 2022.

Asian Oil-Paper Umbrellas, 2022-06-18

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The image is fantastic, of course, but this was one of the newer Eurographics with all the pieces the same basic shape (two tabs opposite, two holes opposite). Eurographics has production in Europe as well, and they still have the true random cut that I associate with the brand. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to know what the cut is like before buying, especially if there is no image of the full box. I’ve also read that people have had issues with really bad fits lately, but this was was otherwise fine, just the boring cut I don’t like.

Asian Oil-Paper Umbrellas, Eurographics, 1000 pieces. Completed on June 18, 2022.