Category: general

New Exit-Puzzles

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Apparently, the Ravensburger Exit-puzzle series is doing well, because there are two new puzzles, and of course, I bought them immediately. Wolves and an old cellar.

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After I had completed my second puzzle in the series, The Witches Kitchen, I noticed that that post kept getting views consistently long after it was published. One reader also contacted me for help with the first puzzle in the series, The Observatory. I thought that most people searching for these puzzles probably wanted more detailed info than I wanted to put in my posts, so after the third and last puzzle from the first batch (The Temple Grounds), I set up a separate spoiler page for the series. If you use Chrome or Firefox you can safely head over to the page because the spoilers are hidden with an HTML-tag called details, but that does NOT work in Microsoft browsers Explorer or Edge. Safari and Opera should be OK, but I’ve not tried them out.

My spoiler page gets more traffic than any other content on my blog, including the home page. Of the posts for individual puzzles, The Witches Kitchen gets the most traffic (about 500 hits). I’ll be doing the new Exit puzzles soon, but I need to finish some of the ones I’m doing now first 🙂

Multipuzzling

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I’m currently working on three different puzzles. In Dortmund, where I now am, I have Epanouissement coloré still unfinished, and in Helsinki, there’s a 500 piece Heye with red hearts and a White Mountain Collage with book covers. If you count the 18 000 piece Paradise Sunset, where I’ve not started on section two yet, I have four puzzles on the go. Progress has been a bit slow lately, mostly due to work.

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Puzzling Proposal

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This is currently on sale on tori.fi in Finland. It’s a wooden puzzle with some text in Finnish. It says “Darling, I would like to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you be my wife?” Kind of adorable 🙂 (I stole the photo from tori.fi)

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Puzzle Board Review

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I got a Ravensburger Puzzle Board for Dortmund, thinking it would be good when the table is occupied with a large puzzle, and I feel like doing a smaller one in between. I tried it out for the first time, and of course, started out the wrong way around…

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… with predictable results. Yeah, that batten on top should probably be below, to stop what’s happened here 🙂

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After I turned it around things got a bit easier. You can adjust the angle of the board, but even with the lowest setting, it was a bit steep for me. The blue velvet will mostly keep pieces in place, but there was a bit of slipping as well. When you place pieces on the board, you have to do it carefully, it’s difficult to spread out many pieces at once, except of course, if you lay the board flat first. This time, I had the pieces spread out on a piece of cardboard, but next time I will lay the board flat, spread out the pieces, and only then raise the board. A 1000 piece puzzle would be more difficult, you would need to spread out pieces somewhere else. Or, you could have more than one board 🙂

I enjoyed working at an angle, I’m pretty sure it’s more ergonomic, although it made no difference with regard to glare (I thought it might).

I also had to move the board before the puzzle was finished, and it was relatively easy: lay it flat and lift. You need to make sure you grab the tilting mechanism as well, you can’t just lift by the edges of the board.

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The board from behind:

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I have tried many, many puzzle boards and other puzzle paraphernalia over the years, and most of the time I end up thinking they’re not much use compared to much cheaper alternatives. I favour pieces of cardboard 🙂 Puzzle boards are, of course, heavier, but in this case, the ability to tilt the board makes it worthwhile. I will use it again.

Upper Class Puzzling

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I’m preparing for the upcoming Downton Abbey movie by rewatching the entire series, and AHA, there’s a puzzle! The Dowager Countess of Grantham and Mrs Crawley are having some sherry while doing a puzzle. You can’t make out the image, and they make no reference to the puzzle, but you can see that the pieces are wooden, and it seems the countess has done the edges first.

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Mrs Crawley has her own little section to work on.

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My grandmother, who was also a puzzler, once told me that Queen Elizabeth is a keen puzzler and that she has an enormous room with many tables with puzzles on them, and even though she is too busy to spend much time puzzling, she sometimes walks through the room placing a piece here and there. This may not be true (except for the part about Queen Elizabeth liking puzzles), my grandmother liked the kind of magazines with royal gossip where much of the content is entirely made up by the “journalists”.

I’ve heard that Queen Elizabeth likes puzzles elsewhere as well, although it’s difficult to verify – it’s not like she gives chatty interviews about her hobbies 🙂 According to a story in the Telegraph from 2010, it is even said that Her Majesty prefers her puzzles without an image on the box in order to make it more challenging.

Anyway, we seem to be in very good company 🙂

Duck Hunt Report

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Collecting all of the puzzles in the Kaj Stenvall Collection is progressing well. I know of 30 puzzles, and I think that’s all there is, but I’m not certain. Anyway, I already have 27, so I’m (probably) only missing three!

I was especially happy to find a copy of one of the two 500-piece puzzles (I already had the other one). I was beginning to doubt whether it existed because I couldn’t even find a photo of it. Anyway,  it does exist and I found it, factory sealed:

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The Social Structures in the Harbour of Love

I made a page with a list of all the puzzles because I could have used one, but I didn’t find anything like that.

Oops, finished but no photo

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Sometimes I finish a puzzle but forget to snap a photo. I found two cases where I have in-progress photos, but none of the completed puzzle.

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Atlantic City, Eurographics, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 9th, 2017.

This was the first puzzle I completed in my flat in Dortmund, but I was in such a hurry to get onto the next one that I forgot to take a photo after I finished. We also did it at work later, but I don’t have a photo from then either 🙂 It’s a nice puzzle, and I expect I will do it again one day.

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This was a complete misfire, of course, but I kind of like it 🙂

The second puzzle is a bit naughty, but most of the details are missing 🙂

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83 Positions of the Kama Sutra, Boxer, 1000 pieces. Completed on February 19th, 2009.

I did finish this, although the quality was really bad. I’ve never heard of the brand, Boxer, and I’m pretty sure they usually don’t produce jigsaw puzzles 🙂

Sadly, I see from my records that I have finished more than 70 puzzles in the last 12 years for which I have no photos 😦

Puzzling on TV

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The most famous on-screen puzzle must be the one in Citizen Kane (photos and analysis here), but here are some that I recently came across on TV:

  1. Dallas

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On Dallas, Christopher and John Ross are being told off for playing with a gun. In the background, there’s a 500-piece puzzle. It looks like an MB, but I’m not sure. And yes, I recently rewatched Dallas. All of it, while puzzling of course 🙂

2. The Fall

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On the great British show The Fall, a serial killer amuses himself with a puzzle. You can’t see what puzzle it is.

3. Bad Blood

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In Bad Blood, Series 1, Episode 6, gangster Vito Rizzuto is doing a puzzle and recounts how he used a puzzle to teach his son about life. Again, you can’t tell what puzzle it is, this is the best shot of it.

Vito: “I sent the new guy out to get me a puzzle and I told him to throw away the box so now I don’t know what it is. ”

Declan [henchman]: “What?”

Vito: “When Nico was a kid, I did the same thing, I threw away the box and we sat there for, like, about two months. You know, trying to do it, it was nothing, nothing, nothing, and then finally, you know, you get the right piece… snapped into place… [he places a piece] and you see the whole landscape. It was like… like a revelation. I was teaching him a life lesson. About patience, tenacity, work ethic… When it all came together, I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody that excited in my life.”

Unfinished

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It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I do give up on a puzzle. A couple of times I’ve put it away to try again later, but in most cases, it’s definitely goodbye. Here are two examples:

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Reptilians by M.C. Escher, Selegiochi, 1000 pieces. Gave up on April 1st, 2009.

I just couldn’t get the edges and the last bit of grey right. I tried many times, but in the end, it was no fun anymore, so back in the box it went. It’s really too bad, because I love Escher’s stuff, but all Escher puzzles that I’ve ever seen are horrible quality. Selegiochi is an Italian manufacturer, and I’m obviously not getting any more of their puzzles (I don’t know if they’re even active in the puzzle department anymore). It wasn’t cheap either. At least one person managed to finish this, though, since there’s a photo on the Jigsaw Wiki. I take my hat off to whoever completed it.

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A Mediterranean Harbour, Arrow, 1500 pieces. Gave up on September 25th, 2017.

A more recent case, a puzzle I bought at a flea market. Arrow puzzles (UK manufacturer) are generally not good quality, but this was especially bad. You can see how the pieces wouldn’t stay flat. Again, I just couldn’t get the final bit of sky together. I took some of it apart and tried again, but pretty soon gave up.

When it’s no fun anymore is when you should give up. When there are so many enjoyable puzzles available, why do something you don’t enjoy?

 

 

Fraud!

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Yesterday I found a new charity shop close to where I live in Dortmund. They get everything as donations, and the proceeds go to charity. They have no prices, you get to decide how much you want to pay. They have mostly books, but there were a few puzzles as well. It’s a really nice, cosy, place, and they offer coffee and cookies. I went in and got a book and two puzzles. One of the puzzles is a 500-piece Spielspass puzzle with 3D effects. As soon as I opened the box I could see something’s wrong:

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That’s nowhere near 500 pieces! I counted them, there are 182 pieces in there. There was also a piece of cardboard in the box, otherwise, I might have reacted to how light it was, and I think that’s why the cardboard is there. I just can’t understand why someone would do something like this, it’s not like the charity shop pays anything.

Anyway, I’m not upset (just mystified), all that happened was that I gave some money to charity. There are worse things 🙂

I’m not going to try putting the existing pieces together, partly because there are less than half left, and partly because the pieces are all the same basic shape (boring and difficult). I usually don’t mind missing pieces, but this is just too much. It’s going in the bin, obviously.

I once did a puzzle with about 50 pieces missing (piece count about 1000-1500, I don’t remember exactly anymore) and I remember it fondly, actually. It was like a reminder that in puzzling, as in life, it is best to work with the pieces you have instead of looking to fill the empty places. I often think that the goal of putting a puzzle together is not to form a complete picture but to reduce the number of pieces until there is only one. That way it’s not a failure even if there are pieces missing. Except, of course, when there are so many missing pieces that you may end up with many small puzzle islands 🙂

The other puzzle I got seems fine:

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I’ll miss out on the augmented reality bit since I don’t have an iPhone or iPad, but everything looks to be OK with this puzzle.