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 Messenger, 2019-12-17

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This wonderful puzzle (thank you again, Stacey!) is actually my first high-quality wooden puzzle. Because the cut is so distinctive, I looked much more at the shapes, usually, I go more my colour and image. Also, with cardboard, you push the pieces into place, but with wood, you have to sort of drop them. I’m sure I’ll be doing this again!

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The Messenger, Artifact, 313 pieces. Completed on December 17th, 2019.

I pulled out the whimsies, althoug I’m not sure I got them all. I left the Roman numerals in

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There were lots of turtles, the composite one is my favourite of all the whimsies.

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An hour glass and an alarm clock.

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There are other animals as well, including two elephants with an acacia tree in the bacjground. I think the white one on the bottom is a bird, partly because it’s part of a book called “Birds of America”. The only other title could make out was “The Silent Sky”.

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There also seems to be a “group whimsy” with two native Americans warming themselves at a fire.

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Finally, there’s another composite, with a lot of turtles standing on top of each other, and on top of it all the earth. This reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle.

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In Progress

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I have no finished puzzles to declare, but I have two on the go on the same table. Further from the camera is my New Year-puzzle (I started really early, I want to be able to finish it before the end of the year), and in the foreground an amazing wooden puzzle that I got through a swap with Stacey from My Jigsaw Journal. I couldn’t wait to get started on it, so I pushed the New Year-puzzle a bit to the side and made some space. Both of these are fantastic puzzles, and I’m enjoying myself enormously.

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New Arrivals

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I’ve been shopping again, and I’ve bought my first vintage wooden puzzle! According to the seller, it’s from the 50s and about 1000 pieces.

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There is no image on the box, but the seller had managed to find this old travel brochure with the image of this puzzle (just the image in the middle, not the areas with text above and below).

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Not only is there no image on the box, there is no information whatsoever, except on the bottom someone has written in Swedish “We are enjoying the sun and watching the Alps with binoculars.” Which is exactly what the people in the image seem to be doing. There are also some numbers, but I have no idea what they mean. The text is very faint. This is going to be interesting!

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I’ve bought some newer puzzles as well:

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This I bought used. My efforts to quit Educa once again thwarted by an irresistible image 🙂

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Castle of Horror, 2019-12-05

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I finally finished Castle of Horror, and, surprising no one, I loved it! I worked on this with no plan, and without anything resembling sorting, and it took me quite a while, but I enjoyed every minute.

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Castle of Horror by Loup, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on December 5th, 2019.

There are vampires everywhere…

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… and ghosts …

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… and witches …

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… some of whom can’t navigate very well. This is such a typical Loup detail 🙂

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This couple arriving makes me think of some many movies where clueless innocents end up in castles with vampires.

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Since this is Loup, there are of course some naughty scenes. This puzzle actually caused a bit of a stir in Finland about 10 years ago. A blogger spotted it in the toy department of a major department store in Helsinki and was horrified (“won’t someone please think of the children”). I think the image below was what set him off. Someone from the department store had to answer questions in the newspaper, but I don’t think they pulled the puzzle.

The situation only arose because sometime earlier, the department store stupidly moved all of their puzzles to the toy department, previously they had a separate section for puzzles for adults. I can just see it, “Why do we have puzzles in two locations? Puzzles are for children, anyway!”. I remember buying my 10 000-piece Garden of Earthly delights there, but sadly, it’s no longer a good place to shop for puzzles, at least if you’re over 10.

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I usually prefer to work with the image on the box rather than the poster, but I couldn’t find the box image this time (I don’t keep the triangular Heye boxes, but I cut out the image). The poster actually worked quite well when taped to my lamp 🙂

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Vintage Posters: [Paris], 2019-11-30

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A D-Toys puzzle with an old poster for a feast in Paris on August 13th, 1893. The feast took place on the Champ de Mars, where the Eiffel Tower had been erected four years earlier.

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Vintage Posters: [Paris], D-Toys, 1000 pieces. Completed on November 30th, 2019.
There was, apparently, theater and music …

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… gymnastics …

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… and a storm? Something’s throwing people and furniture around. I have no idea what sort of entertainment this is supposed to be 🙂

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Castle of Horror, In Progress

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I’ve been working on the Castle of Horror, and I’m enjoying it very much. Progress has been a bit slow, but I’ll get there.

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One brilliant detail is the elderly couple having their tea, completely unfazed by the mayhem going on all around them 🙂

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I watched the third season of the Crown, and it finally happened! Her Majesty is working on a puzzle while on the phone to her sister Margaret. As usual, you can’t see the image, but she appears to be working on a tray.

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Think Outside the Box, 2019-11-23

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This is part of a Clementoni series with a blank, black space in the middle.

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Think Outside the Box, Clementoni, 1000 pieces. Completed on November 23rd, 2019.

Apparently, you’re supposed to write on the blank part yourself. Can’t really see this catching on…

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The puzzle itself was enjoyable, and with Clementoni quality even the black part in the middle wasn’t too difficult.

The Star of Africa, 2019-11-12

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This puzzle shows a board game that every Finnish child has played since it was released in 1951. There are round markers that are distributed on the red dots, and one of those represents the Star of Africa, a diamond, and the object is to find the diamond and bring it back to your starting point (for which you may choose Tangier or Cairo). In addition to the diamond, you may find lesser jewels that can be sold, and then you can fly, or take a boat, to get around faster. You can also turn up a robber and lose all your money. It’s a game of luck, not of skill.

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The Star of Africa, Peliko, 350 pieces. Completed on November 12th, 2019.

As you can see, there are three different piece sizes, with the big pieces on top and the small on the bottom. The small pieces were really tiny. The quality isn’t that good (as usual with Peliko), but it was still great fun. I’ve played the game countless times as a child, and later as an adult with various children. I especially remember how the 3-4-year-old son of some friends had a meltdown after losing all his money to a robber, sweeping the entire game onto the floor. I remember thinking this is one way Finnish children learn to deal with disappointment, I’m sure I’ve done the same as a child 🙂 It’s also possible to play without the robbers.

Even though the game represents lovely childhood memories to me, it has been pointed out that it can also be seen as an example of European colonialism, with Europeans robbing the wealth of Africa.

Housekeeping and Puzzle Art

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According to WordPress, I’ve now posted every day for 365 days, and I would like to thank everyone who has read or commented on this blog. I never expected to keep it up this long, in fact, I never intended to post every day at all, but I got inspired by Stacey at My Jigsaw Journal. But it was never going to be sustainable for me, and now that I’ve used all my old photos, I’m going to cut back quite a lot. I will also have less time for puzzling, as we have a big project at work that will mean long hours during the next 10 months or so. Also, I would like to read a bit more. I will still be puzzling, of course, and I’ve decided I will post every Friday, and sometimes also on Tuesday, depending on how much I’ve been puzzling.

Here’s an interesting little art project that I saw on the wall of a building in 2014 near where I live in Helsinki:

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I remember seeing it a few years later, and it looked like you would expect puzzle pieces to look after being subjected to rain and snow for a while: the image layer was gone, but there was still something left of the cardboard. Unfortunately, I have no photo of that, and when I walked past the place recently, I could no longer find the spot where this was in 2014.

I’ll be back the day after tomorrow!