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.

Skyscrapers in New York, 2020-09-01

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When I started on this one, I was expecting it to be one of those “WTF was I thinking” puzzles (I have a lot of those), but it actually turned out to be quite easy. I still can’t work out why. The sky and buildings are fine, of course, but that’s less than half of the image. The poles in the foreground (no idea what these things are for) also came together quite easily, to my surprise. One thing that helped was that image wasn’t quite as dark as on the box.

Skyscrapers in New York, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on September 1, 2020.

I was watching Kojak while working on this so I had the perfect backdrop 🙂

Alice in Wonderland: Inspecting the Tarts, 2020-07-20

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I would love to do more Alice in Wonderland-themed puzzles, but there aren’t that many, and even fewer with the original (or original style) illustrations that I prefer. I just had to get this, even though I rarely buy new puzzles with less than 500 pieces.

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Inspecting the Tarts, Pomegranate, 300 pieces. Completed on July 20th, 2020.

This had 300 enormous pieces, the puzzle is almost as big as a normal 1000 piece puzzle. The fit was a bit too tight for my taste, but it was still very enjoyable.

Göta Canal, Sweden, 2020-08-19

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Another vintage Ravensburger from the 80’s. I was afraid there was going to be too much of the dark areas and vegetation for me, but I ended up enjoying it. As always with vintage Ravensburger. Apart from the missing piece this was in great shape, like new, really. 

IMG_20200819_070116Göta Canal, Sweden, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 19, 2020.

Shell Advertising Collection, 2020-08-14

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This was fun! There are plenty of funny and/or artistic old advertisements here, and I enjoyed it immensely. Even so, I would have preferred either a larger piece count or fewer images, some of there are quite tiny.

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Shell Advertising Collection, Eurographics, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 14th, 2020.

I think this enthusiastic bobby is my favourite. If anyone knows what ICA stands for in this context, I would very much like to know. I assume it’s not the Swedish chain of supermarkets, and Google was not helpful.

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Some of the ads are less than persuasive:

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Some random men use Shell? Count me in!

The images used range from the very traditional, like this lovely image of Britain that looks decidedly 19th Century …

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It says “See Britain first on Shell”, sorry for the crappy photo.

… to the more futuristic. I really like this abstract engine.

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There are many ads that tell us who prefer Shell, above it’s motorists, there are also farmers, and below seamen:

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But the most surprising thing I learned was that robotic judges who escaped from a horror movie also prefer Shell:

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And what on earth is that tree trunk doing in front of the judge? I guess I’ll never know 🙂

Daily Posts in January and Beach 2000

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Since I switched to posting twice a week in November 2019 after posting daily for a year, I’ve built up about 30 extra posts. I’m now going to post one puzzle a day in January, and in February I will go back to my normal schedule (definitely every Friday and mostly on Tuesdays as well).

Here’s a vintage Heye from 1988, my last puzzle for 2020, to start off with. Two pieces missing, but this was a joy to put together. The cut was probably the best I’ve ever seen in a Heye, with very distinct piece shapes.

Beach 2000 by Blachon, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 31, 2020.

I didn’t understand the title at first – I mean, there was a lot of of 2000-stuff in the late 90s, but this is from 1988. And then I noticed, the sea is not water, but oil:

So, a warning about what our beaches may look like in 2000 if pollution continues, I presume.

Stats for 2020

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As usual, I’ll start the year with my stats for the previous year. In 2020 I completed 147 puzzles and placed 125 151 pieces, up from 2019, when I completed 113 puzzles and placed 101 494 pieces. A year ago I thought that I wouldn’t surpass my 2019 numbers before I retire, but I wasn’t counting on spending almost all my free time at home due to the pandemic.

The top three brands are still Ravensburger, Heye, and Clementoni:

BrandAmount%
Ravensburger4329 %
Heye2618 %
Clementoni1712 %
Jumbo64 %
Tactic53 %
Grafika43 %
Peliko43 %
Eurographics43 %
D-Toys32 %
Unknown32 %
Piatnik32 %
Ricordi Arte21 %
Educa21 %
Cobble Hill21 %
Sunsout21 %
FX Schmid21 %
Schmidt21 %
Gibsons Puzzle21 %
Art Puzzle21 %
Master Pieces11 %
Art Stones11 %
Paul Lamond Games11 %
Pelikan11 %
Endless Games11 %
Galison11 %
Serlachius Museot11 %
eeBoo11 %
Pomegranate11 %
Talking Tables11 %
Borussia Dortmund11 %
Castorland11 %
King11 %
Where it says 1 %, it’s actually 0.68 % rounded upwards, which is why the total is 102 %.

Both Ravensburger and Heye have lost some ground, with Clementoni getting a few percent more than in 2019.

Here’s the breakdown according to piece count:

Piece countAmount%
10006746 %
5004631 %
1500107 %
36853 %
75953 %
30021 %
200021 %
20011 %
120011 %
7711 %
300011 %
35011 %
75011 %
450011 %
19011 %
4911 %
60011 %
Where it says 1 %, it’s actually 0.68 % rounded upwards, which is why the total is 102 %.

Here too, the top three is unchanged. The 368 and 759 piece puzzles are puzzles from the Escape / Exit series, and the 4500 piece puzzle is actually one section of the 18 000-piece Paradise Sunset.

It wasn’t just me who did a lot of puzzles in 2020, the number of views on this blog is up 500 % from 2019, and apart from December (which is always a big puzzling month), March, April and May also have really high numbers of views. Thank you to everyone who took time to read my blog!

In the past few years, I’ve been buying more puzzles than I’ve managed to complete. It slowed down considerably in 2020, but I still acquired 150 puzzles while completing 147 (the gap is bigger if you count pieces, 125 151 pieces placed and 159 756 acquired). Since I have very limited space, this has become a problem, and in 2021 I will need to buy fewer puzzles than I can get out the door. I would like to work on some larger puzzles, but I will probably start the year doing puzzles in the 500-1500-piece range just to get some puzzles completed quickly.

Happy new year!

Spaghetti della Mamma, 2020-12-23

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A wonderful Marino Degano image from 2006. I bought this used on ebay, but it turned out to be complete. The edges were in a separate bag, and since there’s a border, I did them last.

Spaghetti della Mamma by Marino Degano, Heye, 1500 pieces. Completed on December 23, 2020.

Some of the pieces were strangely discoloured, and this can be seen most clearly in the areas where you could see a background colour, like on the image below. The pieces have definitely not gotten wet, because in my experience that always leaves some permanent swelling, and the only other thing I can think of is light. But that doesn’t make much sense either, because it looks like only some pieces have been exposed to light. I could understand discolouration by fading if the puzzle had been mounted at some time, but that wouldn’t affect some pieces this randomly. If anyone has a theory what caused this, I would love to hear it. It did make the background areas a bit more difficult than they would otherwise have been – in busy puzzles like this they’re usually the easiest part.

Otherwise, the puzzle was not all that easy, but a joy from start to finish. In case I’ve not mentioned it often enough, Marino Degano is my favourite Heye artist.

La mamma at her stove:

The ketchup police writes a ticket…

… although there seem to be more serious crimes to investigate:

In Degano puzzles I always look for evidence of football, and I usually find it:

The black and white kits are almost certainly a reference to Juventus – in one Degano puzzle some penguins hold “Forza Juve”-signs 🙂

All in all a great puzzle, I loved working out all of the funny scenes.

Heye 2021 Catalog & a Wasgij

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The Heye catalog for 2021 is here, and there are some great new additions. There’s a stunning new puzzle in the Inner Mystic series by Andy Kehoe, a new installment in the Funky Zoo series by Marino Degano (Transylvanian habitat), and as some other cartoon puzzles that I absolutely have to get. Some of the puzzles are already out, and I got one of them, the first 2000-piece Zozoville-puzzle:

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I recently completed this Wasgij-puzzle, and you can see a photo of the completed puzzle by clicking here:

Cats in Positano, 2020-10-31

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This was my first eeBoo-puzzle. They’ve recently become available on Puzzle-Offensive, where I often shop, and since they have many lovely images I decided to try one.

Cats in Positano, eeBoo, 1000 pieces. Completed on October 31, 2020.

The finish is probably the shiniest I’ve ever come across. There was a good mix of piece shapes, but the precision of the cut wasn’t great – it wasn’t always easy to know if a piece belongs or not. All in all it still added up to a nice experience. The eeBoo puzzles are pretty expensive (most American brands are expensive in Europe), but I may well get one every now and then, for the great images.

My first reaction when I saw the title was “what cats”, but there actually are a couple of cats there: