Not the most exciting image, there’s a lot of brown in there, but still an enjoyable puzzle.
Cuddles, 2020-11-17
Category: Clementoni
Venezia, 2020-10-20
This is part of a Clementoni series of puzzles with what they call a “wood-effect”, and on the box it even says “Wood Puzzle”. It’s not of wood, though, just ordinary cardboard, and the “wood effect” consists of the pieces having grooves that make it look like wood:
I know I’ve said many times that I’ve never met a 500-piece Clementoni that I didn’t like, but I’m afraid that run came to end with this one. The image (of Venice) was darker than on the box, and the grooves affected the fit, so that it was difficult to know whether a piece belongs or not. Good thing I got this cheap. It seems the series has been discontinued, and I won’t be getting any more of them in any case.
Coral Reef, 2020-06-19
I think this is my first underwater image, and I wasn’t all that impressed. Strange, because I really like images of the sea, but apparently, I prefer the images to be above sea level. I did enjoy the panorama format, though.
International Space Station, 2020-07-30
I loved this, even more than I usually love 500-piece Clementonis. It’s an interesting, unusual image, and very enjoyable, even though the dark corners took a bit of time.
Greece: View of Oia Village, 2020-07-09
Somehow, I’ve never done a 500-piece Clementoni I didn’t enjoy, and this was no exception. It’s my second puzzle with an image from the island of Santorini, and both of them have been more difficult than they look.
The island itself is lovely, I visited briefly while on a cruise in 2009, and I would love to go back and stay a bit longer one day.
The Lighthouse x 2, 2020-08-01 & 2020-08-03
Sometimes I buy a bunch of puzzles as a bundle, and that way I can end up with two copies of the same puzzle. That’s exactly what happened with this puzzle.
The boxes are identical…
… but, turns out, the puzzles are not!
They do, of course, look pretty much the same, but there were many differences. I did the second puzzle on top of the first, and pretty soon I realized that the there were tiny diffrences in the cut, so that pieces from one puzzle didn’t fit in the other.
I tried switching the pieces in one corner, but nope, they don’t fit, although every piece was the same basic shape as its twin in the other puzzle, in fact they were almost the same with only small differences.
There were also differences in colour, especially the darker blue hues were different.
What surprised me the most was how the fit was very much different. Below is more or less the same section from each puzzle, and the one on the left had a perfect fit, lay completely flat and felt even when I ran my hand hand over it. The one on the right did not lay completely flat, you can see how the pieces don’t fit evenly, and I could most definitely feel the difference. If you look for it, I think you can also see the difference in the photo above with both of the completed puzzles. The “perfect” one is the one on top.
Here are some photos from the assembly of the second puzzle on top of the first. If doing a puzzle with the box image is like driving with a map, this was definitely like having GPS navigation 🙂
This turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had anticipated! I actually have two copies of another puzzle as well, also Clementoni but 1500 pieces. I’ll probably do them the same way.
The Mischief, 2020-03-21
This was the last from a lot of 500-piece puzzles that I got very cheap. There was one Heye that I particularly wanted, but it turned out that I actually enjoyed all those other puzzles more, especially the Clementonis with images that I would never have chosen myself. That’s the way it always goes 🙂 The only thing I didn’t like was the long, blond hairs that I found in every box.
This was so much fun. The image is a bit unusual, but it was nowhere near as difficult as I expected. The desk, the flowers and the water were the easiest parts, the rest might have been difficult in a larger piece count, but this was just right.
Clever Women Are Dangerous Too, 2020-02-23
When I bought this online, I thought the image was a photograph, but it turns out, it’s an illustration. I love the image! It would have been challenging with a larger piece count, but with 500 pieces it was quite easy.
Googling the title I found out that both the title and the image are apparently from a magazine story by Jon Cleary, from 1950. “He was afraid of being trapped by some gorgeous birdbrain. He forgot that CLEVER WOMEN ARE DANGEROUS TOO“. I also found the name of the artist in the magazine, there is no mention of him on the box, and I couldn’t read the signature. Old magazine illustrations as puzzles is a great idea!
Cordoba, 2020-03-21
Another Clementoni 500-piecer, enjoyable as always. This is a bit older (no more than about 20 years, there’s a website address on the box), and the cardboard is thicker than with the newer puzzles. The top layer has separated on some of the tabs, this is something I’ve seen before with older Clementonis.
Titanic, 2020-03-20
Tonight it will be 108 years since the Titanic hit an iceberg and went down in the early hours of April 15, 1912. I’ve always had a thing for shipwrecks (also air disasters), and I read quite a few books about the Titanic back in the ’90s. I’m not a fan of the 1997 film, though. The only thing I really enjoyed about that were the scenes where you could see how the ship worked, that was amazing, but I had no interest in the story. For the final hour, I thought it would never end, and I was sitting there thinking “Just die already”. There was a British mini-series in 2012 to mark the centenary, I enjoyed that a lot more. There’s also a film from 1958 called A Night to Remember, but it’s so long since I’ve seen it that I don’t remember much about it (heh). I have the DVD, perhaps I’ll pull it out tonight to refresh my memory.
Anyway, the puzzle 🙂 It wasn’t the easiest Titanic puzzle that I’ve ever done, there’s a lot of blue, but there’s still enough variation in shades to help quite a lot. It was very enjoyable despite being challenging at times, and Clementoni puzzles have great quality.
I did the text above the ship and the White Star flags first, then on to the ship itself.
Puzzler1909 