Colourful frog collage of frogs. The frogs I know from Finland are all the same dark green colour, but these certainly made for a more entertaining puzzle.
Frog Business, 2024-04-24
Category: Cobble Hill
Yellow, 2024-01-31
This turned out to be really enjoyable, proving that it really was just that I was in the wrong mood when doing Pink. There were enough slightly larger objects, and the text also helped to keep it interesting, but not too challenging.
For the puzzle challenge this will be #19, yellow.
Red Dragon’s Treasure, 2024-01-07
This puzzle had been hovering near my cart for a few years, somehow always ending up not making the cut, until a couple of months ago when I finally bought it. And I’m glad I did, because it’s now sold out (I think I got the last copy), and I very much enjoyed doing it. I especially like the colours. I did the yellow pile of coins first, then the rest of the background, and the red bits of the dragon were last.
For the puzzle challenge I’m doing, this was the bonus challenge for January, which is “dragon”. By the way, the literal meaning of the Finnish word for dragon is “salmon snake” – a rather desperate attempt to describe a dragon using some familiar animals.
CORRECTION: Actually, it seems that the first part probably doesn’t mean salmon here, but it comes from an old Swedish word “floghdraki”, which means flying snake. The Finnish word “lohikäärme” took the first part (flying, flogh) from the Swedish word and used the Finnish word for snake (käärme). A flying snake makes much more sense.
BaristArt, 2023-09-14
This was another puzzle in the series “What was I thinking?”. Somehow, I only realized that this will probably be quite hard when I pulled it out to do it, all that white and brown. I’m not sure if these are real, or if there’s been some photoshopping involved, but they look amazing. I especially like the skyline (not sure of what city).
Obviously, I did the background and cups first:
The rest was a lot slower, but I found in entertaining anyway.
Pink, 2023-09-07
This was my first puzzle in the Cobble Hill Rainbow Collection, and I have to say it was not as enjoyable as I was hoping it would be. Turns out, I wasn’t in the mood for a puzzle with such small details, I think I would have preferred some larger objects. There was also a small quality issue with many pieces stuck together to another piece, and in many cases it wasn’t possible to separate the pieces without damaging them.
I really liked the clock and the water melon:
The word pink appeared in many languages, including Finnish (“vaaleanpunainen”):
Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes, 2023-03-05
Another Star Trek puzzle by Cobble Hill, this time with posters for episodes from The Next Generation-series. I preferred the designs for The Orignal Series, but this was great fun, as well. Again, I have definitely seen every episode of TNG more than once, but I still can’t recall most of the episodes here from the poster and title alone. The most familiar ones are I, Borg, where Captain Picard was turned into a Borg, and Deja Q, featuring a really childish and annoying creature with enormous powers.
Here are some close-ups of designs that I liked:
For my puzzle challenge, this is #20, a person or character you would like to meet. The character is Captain Picard, but not when he was a Borg!
Star Trek: Classic Episodes, 2022-09-04
Another one of the Cobble Hill Star Trek puzzles. This one features stylish posters for The Original Series episodes. I wonder, what these images were created for. Probably not for this puzzle, but individual episodes of TV series don’t usually have their own posters. Perhaps Star Trek is a special case 🙂
I’ve definitely seen all of these episodes, probably more than once, but I still can’t remember what all of them were about. I remember Mirror Mirror very well, that was an episode where some people ended up in a parallel universe, where the Enterprise crew was evil, and some of the evil crew ended up in the normal Enterprise. Evil Spock is the one with the beard, obviously. I also remember The Trouble With Tribbles, a more comic episode, where the tribbles were small furballs that reproduced at an alarming rate.
Anyway, the puzzle was great fun!
A while ago, I wasn’t sure if there were four or five puzzles in this Cobble Hill series. Turns out, all I had to do to find out was turn the box upside down:
There are five, of which I currently have four. The last one that I don’t have has photos from TOS. I prefer the stylish posters from the other puzzles, but if I come across the last one, I will probably get it anyway.
Thomas Chambers Collage, 2022-08-30
A collage with paintings by 19th Century English painter Thomas Chambers. He was born (and died) in England, but he spent most of his life in the USA. He did mostly maritime subjects, as you can see from this collage.
The paintings where a location is specified are all from the US Northwest, except one painting of Gibraltar (middle of the top row). (I’m assuming this is British Gibraltar in the south of Spain, although I did find a Gibraltar to the south of Detroit, at lake Erie.)
This was a very entertaining puzzle. I did the text first, then water and sky, and as usual, the vegetation was the most difficult part, and I did that last. The top left painting, “Storm Tossed Frigate”, was the most fun to do.
Packet Ship Passing Castle Williams, New York Harbor. Castle Williams still exists (I checked), but I bet everything else looks different now 🙂
Lovely view of Niagara Falls.
Buttons, 2022-08-22
After a slightly disappointing puzzle, I chose one that is pretty much disappointment proof. Lots of text, food, and silly word games. I loved it!
It seems almost impossible to choose a favourite, but that stack of pancakes with “I regret nothing” really resonates with me 🙂
The Women of Star Trek, 2022-08-05
I was actually going to save this puzzle for later, but when I heard that the excellent Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura in the original Star Trek series and many films, sadly died on July 30, I thought it was time to do this.
The puzzle was fun and relatively easy. Many of the characters were very familiar to me, although some I can not recall at all, and others I know, but I don’t remember in which series they belong 🙂 I probably know The Next Generation best of the series, although I have seen them all, except for the last one.
Star Trek really was ahead of its time in many ways. Before the original series started in the 60s, they did a pilot, where the second in command was a woman, but test audiences reacted badly to a woman issuing orders (“who does she think she is?”). Majel Barrett, who played the character, later appeared as various characters, including Nurse Chapel in TOS, and Lwaxana Troi in TNG, both present in the puzzle. She also married series creator Gene Roddenberry.
In the 60s, Uhura was a rare example of a black woman appearing as a competent professional in an American TV series. Later, NASA employed Nichelle Nichols to attract women and African Americans to join the service.
Fun puzzle with some great ladies!
I’m in Dortmund again, and will remain here for the next six weeks. Puzzling will be intermittent, I’m planning a trip to the south next week.
Puzzler1909 