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.
Not my usual type of image, or piece count. I recently bought about 40 puzzles from someone who wanted to get rid of all her puzzles at once, and it worked out at less than 2 EUR / puzzle. All good brands, including about 10 Wasgijs and even a wooden Wentworth puzzle. This and the Wentworth were the only ones in the lot with less than 500 pieces. There were also four puzzles in there that I either have or have done previously, but I don’t mind.
This has XXL pieces and was pleasant enough to put together 🙂
Animals in the Jungle, Ravensburger, 200 pieces. Completed on February 6th, 2020.
My friend brought the other puzzle made by her grandfather’s brother! The Christmassy one I wrote about earlier has only recently been re-discovered, but this one my friend remembers doing multiple times as a child. As you might expect, this is more worn, and on one piece the image is partly gone. Not a huge surprise for a puzzle that many children have worked on.
The image shows scenes with Native Americans doing the things white people expect them to do (there’s one white guy in the upper left-hand corner), and I doubt this image would be made today.
[Indians], hand made, 49 pieces. Completed on February 12th, 2020.The puzzle itself has 49 pieces, and the cut was more intricate than on the first puzzle. I’m convinced this was made later, and there were even whimsies:
A shark, a dog, a duck and a tree with a woodpecker and an owl. Really impressive!
These are the only known puzzles by this artist, but I’m sure he did more, and I hope they will be found someday!
It’s been a while since I did a King puzzle, but I recently got two as a gift. This was more difficult than I expected, and the King pieces are still quite thin, I’m afraid. I was never in any doubt whether a piece belonged in a place or not, and of course, I enjoyed the image 🙂
I’m in Dortmund again (heading back to Helsinki today), and on Friday we beat Frankfurt 4-0, so I was happy to spend the weekend on a football-themed puzzle.
Soccer Stadium, King, 1000 pieces. Completed on February 16th, 2020.
This was a fun and easy puzzle. Trafalgar Square with Nelson’s column and the National Gallery in the background. Another quick one.
London – Trafalgar Square by Christopher Rogers, Ravensburger, 500 pieces.
And Happy Valentine’s Day! I got this 77-piece puzzle as a freebie with an order. This happens quite a lot in Germany, when you buy for a set sum, you get something for free. I think it’s a way of getting rid of stock they can’t move, and usually what you get is useless, but this was nice. It’s a Schmidt puzzle and excellent quality.
I bought this used and carelessly threw it on the backseat of my car. Of course, it slid off, and I had to pick up the pieces from the floor. When I had finished the puzzle, there was still one piece missing, so I headed back to my car in the middle of the night, and managed to find the missing piece 🙂 Happy end!
Niagara Falls, Clementoni, 500 pieces. Completed on January 22nd, 2020.
I enjoyed this a lot, I like doing water (also rocks, but not forests). At first, I wondered why everyone on the boat is wearing blue, but then I realized they must be raincoats.
I bought this for the princely sum of 1.50 EUR, and it turned out to be complete! It’s a Ravensburger from 1980, and the quality is fantastic. The piece shapes are so distinct, I often connected pieces based on shape alone. It makes me kind of sad that quality has declined so much in the past 40 years. In fact, I decided that whenever I see a Ravensburger from before 1990 at a good price I’m buying it, whatever the image. Most of the time, I find cut and fit more important than the image.
Passengers Ashore, Ravensburger, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 19th, 2020.
Some of the pieces and the box showed definite signs of wear, it looks like this puzzle has been assembled many times.
There was actually a reason I decided to do this puzzle. I saw the Ravensburger 9000-piece Bombardment of Algiers for sale for a very good price, factory sealed, and I wanted to try a classic maritime image to see how I liked it. I did end up buying the 9000-piece puzzle:
The box has been opened, but the bags are still sealed!
This one came together unbelievably fast! I expected to finish in March but ended up completing it in January.
The World by Rajko Zigic, Heye, 3000 pieces. Completed on January 31st, 2020.
The map itself if modern, but it’s done in the style of old maps. For a puzzler, this truly is the best of both worlds, because on old maps it’s often difficult to identify places, and on modern maps, there is far too much water (on old maps the seas are full of ships and monsters).
“Modern World – Antique Map. A tribute to Mapmakers and Seafarers.”
These are images that you might find on old maps.
While relevant, I can’t remember ever seeing the Morse alphabet with flags on a map before. There were also images of various knots, used by sailors, I presume.
I couldn’t resist this mystery puzzle I found at a flea market. On the box, it says “Not houses! … but flowers” (it also says “500 pieces”). As I started on the puzzle, I knew straight away that it was a Ravensburger.
After I had completed the bench and most of the basket I was confident I would know the image if I saw it, and so I googled Ravensburger and flowers and had no problem identifying the puzzle. It’s called Beautiful flowers, and it turned out to be complete. It was fun doing a puzzle without knowing the image in advance!
Beautiful flower, Ravensburger, 500 pieces. Completed on January 21st, 2020.
A friend of mine was kind enough to share a family heirloom with me. This wooden puzzle was handmade by the brother of her grandfather, probably in the 20s or 30s. There is one other puzzle he made, and I hope to do that, too, one day (the puzzles live in Sweden, so my friend will have to bring it over).
[Christmas Preparations], hand made, 190 pieces. Completed on January 19th, 2020.The pieces are really big, I took a photo with my car keys to show the scale. I was also going to measure the completed puzzle, but I forgot.
The puzzle is stored in an old shoebox, and it says ca. 190 pieces on the box. It also says Jenny Nyström on the box. I asked my friend who that is, and it turns out she is a very famous 19th Century Swedish artist who specialized in traditional Christmas images. (You’ll see what I mean if you do an image search of Jenny Nyström). This signature on the puzzle is not Jenny, but Curt Nyström. Turns out, her son continued the family tradition!
Anyway, I was very impressed with the quality of the puzzle, it is every bit as good as I would expect a commercial puzzle to be. I was especially impressed by how the image is perfectly glued to the plywood. It would be great to be able to make my own puzzles, but I’m afraid that’s not gonna happen, I’m far too clumsy 🙂
This was a really fun image with a banana rocket about to launch and lots of interesting details.
Rocket Launch by Uli Oesterle, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 13th, 2020.
Kirk is canoodling with an alien as Uhura looks on in disgust. Scotty has forgotten to plug in the transporter.
Yarn ninjas armed with knitting needles.
Darth Vader is on babysitting duty.
Yikes, looks like Lisa Simpson took some steroids and got into pro wrestling!
And now for the bad news. The pieces were far too thin, so thin that the puzzle didn’t lie entirely flat. I tried to get a photo where you can see it, but this is the best I could do.
The lesser quality was especially noticeable because I did the Funky Zoo puzzle right before, and that was fine. Below on the left a piece from the Funky Zoo puzzle and on the right a piece from this one. The difference is clear.
It’s not yet bad enough to go on my do-not-buy-list, but it’s really annoying. The thing is, it doesn’t seem to affect all Heye puzzles. Rocket Launch is from 2016 and Australian Habitat (the Funky Zoo puzzle) is from 2018. Rocket Launch came in a triangular box and the Funky Zoo series comes in regular boxes. Not sure if that’s relevant here, but I will keep an eye on this situation.
Puzzler1909 