Category: Dortmund

The World, In Progress

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The first puzzle that I started in 2020 is a 3000-piece world map from Heye. I haven’t done a world map in quite a while!

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It’s not an old map, but a modern map made in the style of old maps. The artist is Rajko Zigic, who has also done the Heye pirate map. The puzzle is from 2008, and it’s made in Germany (Heye moved production to Eastern Europe about 10 years ago). When I opened the box and spread out the pieces, I noticed a rather pungent smell, apparently from the glue used. I can’t remember ever noticing something like that before with Heye. I bought this new in 2008, so the smell was definitely from production. Anyway, in a couple of days it dissipated, so no problem, really, but strange.

Another thing I can’t recall seeing in a Heye puzzle before: pieces with one side without tab or hole. Educa still has this type of piece, but I can’t think of another major manufacturer that has these, at least not with a standard grid cut.

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With 3000-piece puzzles, I’ve usually spread out some of the pieces on pieces of cardboard to leave some room to work on the table, but this time, I decided to spread out all the pieces on the table. Pretty soon I got a piece of cardboard anyway, and I did the edges on that.

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While I really like having all the pieces on the table in front of me, that didn’t work so well with this image. After I had completed the edges and border, I wanted all the pieces within the edges to be more or less in the area they belonged, that means no random pieces. I still only have one piece of cardboard, though.

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I’ve done most of the non-map stuff, like compasses, ships and monsters, so when I get back to Dortmund I will get on with the more difficult part of the puzzle.

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Pantone: Juicy Limes, 2019-12-30

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Pantone is, apparently, a colour management system widely used in many industries. The things you learn while puzzling 🙂

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Pantone: Juicy Limes, Clementoni, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 30th, 2019.

As a puzzle, this was one of those where you know exactly what to do all the time. I’ve done many puzzles lately where I place pieces here and there with no clear plan, but this was very clear and quite easy.

I started with the colours at the bottom, then on to the lime-coloured stripe on the right. This turned out to be the most difficult part, and I even sorted the pieces according to shape, but the cut was so great that it wasn’t much of a problem. I’ve grown more and more fond of Clementoni, and it’s now up there with Ravensburger and Heye for me.

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I went on to do the blue bowl, the plate, the table and finally, the limes and the green background.  There are three other puzzles in the Pantone-series, not must-haves, but I will get them if I see them at a good price. This was my last completed puzzle for 2019.

 

After School Fun, 2019-12-29

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This was a great puzzle except for the boring cut (all pieces with two tabs opposite). Fun image,  strong colours, and the quality was great. I was appalled that the children are playing hockey in the street, but at least they’re not wearing skates 🙂  Before I started working on this, I assumed they were on a frozen lake, but lakes don’t come with stop signs. The kid with #9 is wearing a jersey that looks exactly like the ones my favourite hockey team, HIFK, wears.

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After School Fun by Patricia Bourque, Eurographics, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 29th, 2019.

I had heard that new Eurographics have this boring cut, but this was my first experience with it. There are still 13 Eurographics puzzles in my to-do pile, no doubt some of them will have this cut as well, but not all. I bought this about a year ago, and my latest Eurographics purchase was about a month ago. I pulled out my newest Eurographics, and that still has the random cut that I’ve always associated with Eurographics:

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There’s also this on the box:

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From now on I’m going to assume that Eurographics has the boring cut unless I see this on the box. And if I find one of these cut with only two-tabs-opposite pieces, I’m going to complain about false advertising 🙂

Another thing a noticed: the one with the random cut is made in Germany:

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Eurographics puzzle that was made in Europe before, it’s always been Canada or the USA.

The puzzle with the boring cut is American:

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Happy 2000, 2019-12-27

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This is the best New Year puzzle I’ve ever seen. It was released in 1999 (as you can probably guess from the title), and I originally bought it 20 years ago. Unfortunately, I lost that puzzle (I still don’t know what happened to it), but earlier this year I bought another copy (still factory sealed). I’m not going into how much I paid, but I’m not sorry! I still loved every piece of this great puzzle, and I’m going to take better care of it this time. I wish Heye still used Jabo, he’s done some great images. I also see no reason why this puzzle shouldn’t still be in print, it would be great for any new year, not just 2000.

I did most of the bottle first, then onto the fireworks and the “Happy New Year” text.

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Happy 2000 by Jabo, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on December 27th, 2019.

There are lots of great details. Here are some unconventional spacecraft as well as the more familiar Enterpolice, with a pointy-eared pilot at the helm.

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Some devils are partying with fiery drinks …img_20191227_190628

… and the Rolling Bones perform.img_20191227_190636

Someone’s been abducted, but at least the aliens look nice.img_20191227_190657

The text and fireworks glow in the dark, but it’s incredibly hard to get good photos of that. This is the best I could do, the right half looks good, but it’s still blurry on the left.

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Happy New Year!

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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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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