The title is a play on words, because flea market in Finnish is “kirpputori”, but here the last part “tori” (market) has been replaced by Thor, a god in Norse mythology. The image is from a children’s book in the Tatu and Patu series (I wrote about Tatu and Patu here).
Kirppu-Thor by Aino Havukainen & Sami Toivonen, Peliko, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 10.
Busy images often lead to me spending too much time looking at the box, but here it was more “Ooh, I just saw the other half of this lamp”, followed by a happy reunion. This was a perfect image, and I enjoyed it immensely despite crappy Peliko quality with false fits.
Prisma is a chain of hypermarkets in Finland, belonging to the S-group. They’ve recently put out a series of puzzles manufactured by Tactic. This is absolutely the best of the images, the others are black and white. The quality was also much better than I have seen from Tactic lately, no risk of placing a piece wrong, and the finish is very pleasant. I really don’t understand why Tactic keeps putting out subpar puzzles, they are clearly capable of doing much better.
[Old Ads], Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 8, 2022.
Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip to Freiburg, because I got sick. Probably not Corona, the two tests I’ve done were negative, but still really annoying.
This was fun! Sometimes, I like to do puzzles, where I never have to think about what to do next. With this it was really obvious, I did the fluid first, then the powder, then the utensils. After that, I filled in the black parts, then finally the green background. Loved it!
Matcha Tea, Clementoni, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 7, 2022.
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 Women of Star Trek, Cobble Hill, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 5, 2022.
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.
I previously wrote about Trefl’s series of cardboard puzzles with whimsies, and claimed I had one. Well, it turned out I was mistaken, but that was easily fixed, of course. There are four puzzles in the Hidden Shapes series, with piece count ranging from 1003 to 1060. The actual piece counts are on the box instead of the usual “1000”.
Underwater Life, Trefl, 1060 pieces. Completed on July 10, 2022.
There are 10 whimsies, all of them composite, so that they take up a large part of the puzzle:
The whimsies seem to be sea-related, although I’m not sure what the bottom two are supposed to be:
The overall quality of the puzzle is the same as normal Trefl puzzles, that is to say good, but not exceptional. Obviously, there are quite a few pieces that are not fully interlocking, and I was wondering if that would be more annoying with a cardboard puzzle than with a wooden one since the pieces are lighter. I didn’t really feel there was any difference in that regard. Of course, you spend some time pushing pieces back together, but you do that with wooden puzzles as well. Based on this experience, I see no reason why whimsies should be exclusive to wooden puzzles, they work just as well with cardboard, and it is fun working with non-standard piece shapes.
Well, this turned out to be harder than I was expecting. Story of my life 🙂 The districts that are marked with colours were the easiest part, but even that wasn’t all that easy. Then there’s a lot of text, but it was so small that I had to use a magnifying glass all the time. On the right, there’s a list of notable buildings, and even a section on buildings that were being built in 1876. On the left, there’s a list of the blocks for each district (the blocks in the oldest parts of Helsinki have names in addition to numbers, and often they’re named after animals).
Helsinki City Plan 1876, Lautapelit.fi, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 8, 2022.
This is a puzzle by the in-house brand of board game store Lautapelit.fi, but it’s not their best work, unfortunately. The fit was a bit off, but not too bad, and there was a good mix of piece shapes.
The place where I live is to the north of this map, I guess that was just wilderness in 1876 🙂
The Surprise series by Mordillo always consists of four panels, but the last is not on the box. If you want to see how this race ends, you can click here to see the entire image.
Surprise!: Horses by Mordillo, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 3, 2022.
This was actually a rather strange puzzling experience. After I finished the jockeys and the hedge, I couldn’t make much progress. I finished the borders, and then I had to leave for Helsinki. Usually, when you leave a puzzle for several weeks, you sort of have to start over, because you’ve forgotten (almost) everything you learned about the puzzle, but in this case, it turned out to be a good thing. When I came back last Saturday, expecting some hard work on this, it seemed much easier. The pieces just fell into place. Puzzling is strange sometimes 🙂
This is the first puzzle in a set of two by Falcon. I’m not a huge fan of Falcon, I find the pieces often fit where they don’t belong, but with an image like this, it doesn’t matter much. I didn’t actually find that pieces fit where they don’t belong this time, but I still didn’t like the fit. It felt slightly off, the pieces just didn’t fit together as well as I would wish.
The Motorcycle Show 1, Falcon, 500 pieces. Completed on May 21, 2022.
This puzzle was not easy, but it was a pleasure from start to finish. The quality was excellent, the best kind of Pomegranate. According to the box, the image explanes the concepts of Buddhism, and images like this are placed outside temples, so that people who can’t read can also understand the teachings. The artist is unknown but presumed Tibetan.
Puzzler1909 