Not my favourite Titanic puzzle (that would be this), but still very nice.

I loved this installment in the Lost Places series! It was just enough challenging to be really engrossing, and I found myself unable to leave the puzzle table before I’d finished. I did the yellow sofas and the dark parts first, but even in the white parts there were plenty of clues, so it wasn’t too difficult.

For the puzzle challenge, this will be #19, “White”.

I’m doing the puzzle challenge in my Finnish FB group again this year, and here are the items for 2025:

I think I have a puzzle for most of the items, although “several pieces missing” is, of course, out of my control, since I won’t be throwing any pieces out to cross this off my list 🙂 It might be tricky to find a puzzle that fits four items, and my hero / villain probably won’t be from a cartoon, but I won’t have to shop much for the challenge.

A bit late, but here’s my stats for 2024. I completed 129 puzzles, and placed 115 448 pieces, down from the previous year’s 130 puzzles and 120 000 pieces. The largest puzzle I did was 3000 pieces, but I’m counting it as two 1500 pieces here, because that’s the way I completed it. Here’s the breakdown according to piece count:

No changes here, it’s still mostly 1000 and 500 piece puzzles. Next the breakdown by brand:

Ravensburger continues to increase (it was at 27% for 2023), and Clementoni and Heye are tied in second place. The only reason Tactic made fourth place is that I finished the Stenvall duck puzzles, and I’m not forseeing many Tactic puzzles in 2025.

As for my continuing struggle to place more pieces than I bring in, I failed again. I placed 115 448 pieces and acquired 141 499 pieces. Oh well, I’ll try again this year.

So, time for my statistical round-up of 2023. In 2023, I completed 130 puzzles, and placed 120 000 pieces, down from the previous year’s all time high (145 puzzles and 134 854 pieces). There were again no really large puzzles, the biggest I did was 2000 pieces. Here’s the breakdown by piece count:

Next the breakdown for brands, where Clementoni has passed Heye for number two with quite a margin, and the Ravenburger percentage is higher than ever.

In a surprise to no one, I again failed to acquire less pieces than I placed – for the 120 000 placed pieces, I acquired 150 006 new ones. Sigh. I was doing really well, but then there were a lot of amazing sales starting in October, and the wheels came off again. Maybe this year?

Happy New Year!

Heye has published their catalog for 2024! There will be two new Zozoville puzzles, I will probably get those, and there’s a new series called Future Cities that I quite like:

I will definitely get the new Any Kehoe Inner Mystic puzzle, and the new Marino Degano:

No new Funky Zoo puzzles, sadly, and not much that interests me in the comics department. I wish they’d do more re-releases of old Degano and Jabo images, there are so many puzzles that I’ve missed…

This puzzle was just as much fun as looks!

There was not a singe brand that I recognized, and I’m pretty sure none of these beers actually exist.

There’s a bird throwing someting at the mirror, and my first thought was that the projectiles – one has landed in a beer glass here – were lemons. Then I saw that another looked like it was melting on the counter, so I suppose it has to be ice cubes, but who would put ice cubes in beer? I certainly hope they’re not eggs 🙂

Another 500-piece Clementoni. This was fun and easy, and an unusual setting for Mickey and Minnie. The Chinese characters mean “winter solstice” in Chinese and Japanese (Google photos read the text from the image, and then I could search for it).