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.

Beach Umbrellas, 2022-02-05

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Of the three eeBoo puzzles I’ve done, this was definitely the one I enjoyed most. Because they’re expensive, I had almost decided I wasn’t going to get more of these, but I may have to rethink that. I started with the food in the foreground, and did the green bits last. Loved every minute of it!

Beach Umbrellas, eeBoo, 1000 pieces. Completed on February 5, 2022.

I’m in Dortmund right now, but it will be a short visit, I’ll be back in Helsinki late on Monday. On Sunday, there’s a game, which I thought I wouldn’t be able to see in the stadium, but the rules changed just in time to allow 10 000 instead of just 750 fans, and I managed to snag a ticket! It will be a really tricky game against Leverkusen, and quite frankly, I’ll be happy with a draw.

Whose Move, 2022-02-02

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Remember ths Kai Stenvall Collection? I just realized that it’s been an entire year since I found the last puzzle in the collection and completed it. I’m going to start doing more of these, otherwise I’ll never get them all done. Two cranky ducks this time, looks like some sort of marital dispute.

Whose Move by Kai Stenvall, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on February 2, 2022.

This was thankfully one of the older, better quality Tactics, otherwise those sheets would have been impossible. It looks so clear now, but most of the blue pieces looked more like grey before I put it all together. Not easy, but it remained enjoyable to the end.

Dark Chill, 2022-01-29

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Another wonderful Kandinsky. There was quite a lot of blue, but it wasn’t too much of a problem. When I finally sorted the remaining pieces by shape, I found that the the smallest pile was the one with two tabs opposite. This was my first Bluebird with a large area of the same colour, and the cut was OK, although not excellent. Pieces sometimes fit where they don’t belong, at least if you don’t look carefully 🙂 This 1000-piece puzzle was made in Poland, unlike the larger Bluebirds that are made in Turkey. I think the cut of the larger puzzles is better.

Dark Chill by Kandinsky, Bluebird, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 29, 2022.

The title on the box was in German and French only (Dunkle Kühle / Fraîcheur sombre), and the translation is mine (I don’t know if there is an established English translation). The painting is from 1927, when Kandinsky was working in Germany. He left when the Nazis took over.

Wine Labels, 2022-01-27

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This was a great puzzle! It would have been nice as just a collage with wine labels, which is what I thought it was, but when I started doing it, I noticed that some parts of the labels continued onto neighbouring labels. I’m not sure if these are actual wine labels that have been edited, or if they are entirely imaginary, but either way, they made for a wonderful puzzle.

Wine Labels, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 27, 2022.

A giraffe taking a bite out of a balloon and my favourite label, the Argentinian Malbec.

Space Hoppers and Scooters, 2022-01-26

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A Gibsons collage with toys and games. This continues the recent trend where 1000-piece Gibsons are excellent quality, and 500-piece ones are pretty bad. They must use different subcontractors. This was similar to the Jumbo Wasgij-puzzles, it has the same waxy finish, and a similar cut. It also says Made in the Netherlands on the box, so it may not be entirely accidental. (There was no indication of where the previous substandard 500-piece puzzle was made, I checked.)

Anyway, the puzzle was great fun, even though there were few of my favourite toys in there.

Space Hoppers and Scooters by Val Goldfinch, Gibsons, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 25, 2022.

Here’s one that I have fond memories of:

Basically a big, air-filled ball that you could hop around on, holding on to the “ears”. Mine was orange, and I don’t think it had a face painted on.

Football and games. None of the board games are familiar to me.

Wayne’s Garage, 2022-01-25

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I’ve only done three MasterPieces puzzles before, and those were all much better quality than this one. Unfortunately, the fit wasn’t very good. It was mushy, not as bad as Sunsout at its worst, but the same kind of bad fit. This was a very recent acquisition, and I noticed that the price was lower than for the previous MasterPieces puzzles I bought. I would rather have the better quality and the higher price.

Wayne’s Garage, MasterPieces, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 25, 2022.

So, I started out a bit grumpy because of the bad cut, but I have to say this image was so much fun that I still enjoyed myself enormously. I especially liked all the signs on the wall 🙂

On an unrelated note, I found the lost piece from Monaco Classics. It was in the fridge. Yes, in the fridge. I think I know how it happened: there was a box of clementintes in the fridge, and I took it out for a while and put it down on the table where the puzzle was. When I put the box back in, there must have been a piece stuck to the bottom.

Planet Earth, 2022-01-24

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My second Unidragon puzzle. This one I ordered directly from the Unidragon website, despite the fact that they had quite a few bad reviews. What people were mostly complaining about was that they were slow to ship puzzles, but I don’t mind that, I can wait. Except I didn’t have to, because this beauty was delivered very fast, and as promised dispatched from within the EU (which means no import duties or taxes).

Planet Earth, Unidragon, 500 pieces. Completed on January 24, 2022.

This was so much fun, with lots of whimsies and an interesting cut. This time I even remembered to assemble the puzzle on a piece of cardboard, so that I could easily flip it using another piece of cardboard:

I decided not to pull out the whimsies, there are so many of them. There are a lot of stars, and not just as whimsies, many connectors are also star-shaped.

Here are two versions of Saturn:

There’s also the sun:

There are also a lot of round objects, but I can’t tell what planets they represent, only Saturn is easily recognizable.

I like the way all the round objects are formed in different ways, concentric circles, three solid pieces, two spirals and so on.

All in alla great puzzle!

Monaco Classics, 2022-01-23

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Quite busy racing scene, a bit difficult in the beginning, but it got easier fast. I love Loup’s funny, big-nosed characters. Unfortunately, I managed to lose a piece.

Monaco Classics by Loup, Heye, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 23, 2022.

A very busy pit stop.

A note to (now retired) German race car driver Michael Schumacher from his wife Corinna (it’s actually spelled with a double n) :-). While this 1500-piece version is from 2019, the image was originally released as a 2000-piece puzzle in 1997, when Schumi was still very much active.

UPDATE 26.1.2022: I found the missing piece. It was in the fridge…

Submarine Fun, 2022-01-17

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I think this was my first Heye for this year. I’m sure there will be many more 🙂 While it’s not quite as busy as many Heye images, it was kind of difficult to know where to start. I ended up doing the sharks first (I’m pretty sure they’re sharks, although they behave more like dolphins, and there are way less teeth than in most portrayals of shark). After I got going, the puzzle was great fun!

Submarine Fun by Uli Oesterle, Heye, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 17, 2022.
Lots of things going on inside the submarine, and I really liked how men and women seemed to be working together, and also wearing the same type of uniform. There’s plenty of leisure activities as well, as you can see.
There was also plenty of action on the surface.

1980s, 2022-01-14

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This was a very enjoyable puzzle, and also my first Re-marks. I got it in a swap with Stacey at MyJigsawJournal, so thank you, Stacey! Almost all of the things in this collage are things I remember, although much wasn’t really to my taste. When I think of 80s movies, I think more along the lines of Evil Dead and Nightmare on Elm Street, not Footloose and Flashdance 🙂

1980s, Re-marks, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 14, 2022.

I found the quality to be good, but not excellent, and it was certainly the best puzzle with a ribbon cut that I’ve ever done. I actually realized that my dislike of the ribbon cut is more to do with the fact that all of the ones I’ve done before have been rather poor quality than with the cut itself.

Here’s one show that I definitely watched:

The Golden Girls. The last of them, Betty White, passed away just before new year. I now know that she had a long career in American television before that, but the Golden Girls was the first I saw of her. What none of the obituaries that I read mentioned was her amazing portrayal of Catherine Piper in The Practice and Boston Legal – she was brillant, and so funny. RIP Betty White.

When I saw this piece, I immediately thought that Planet of Apes was much earlier than the 80s:

Turns out, it was a gremlin, not an ape:

It would be impossible to do puzzles without interpreting the individual pieces, but it can certainly lead you astray when you don’t have the complete picture 🙂