So far, I’ve only used sheets of cardboard to assemble puzzles on in Helsinki. Then I decided to replace a writing desk that I hardly ever used and a small dining table with one really large dining table. Now I have a great table to do puzzles on, and what better way to break it in than Historia Comica, Opus 2!
Opus 2 was previously released in 2011, although seems to me that hardly anyone managed to snag one back then. The image copyright is from 2009.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read my blog that I’m a huge fan of Heye puzzles.
I’ve already found out that the triangular boxes are older than I thought, and also that a lot of images get released again and again, sometimes slightly edited and often with a different piece count. I decided to see what I could find out about the early days of Heye puzzles.
There’s a short article on Wikipedia in German, where we learn that Heye Verlag (Heye Publishing Company) was founded in 1962 and that they originally published magazines and from 1964 also calendars. There is no mention of when production of puzzles started, but they say that the first cartoon artist, Mordillo, was signed in 1972. This may not have been for puzzles, though, but for calendars. It is also quite likely that the same images were used for both calendars and puzzles.
To find some old Heye puzzles I tried the Jigsaw-Wiki. The project aims to collect information on as many puzzles as possible, and since many of the contributors are German, there’s a good chance of finding many Heye puzzles. The oldest (dated) puzzles on the site are from the 60s (mostly Ravensburger), and the earliest Heye puzzles I could find were from 1974. There are 19 Heye puzzles from 1974, at least 18 of them in triangular boxes (for one, there is no picture). It seems that Heye used triangular boxes and cartoon images right from the start, only later adding some traditional boxes and photo images!
Of the 19, 10 are by Loup and 9 by Mordillo – both of these artists are of course still much used by Heye. There were 2 puzzles with 1500 pieces, 11 with 1000, 3 with 750, 2 with 500 and 1 with 120.
Several of the puzzles have been re-released later.
But it was already released in 1974, and again in 1981.
It’s great that they release old images again, and I hope they’re keeping an eye on eBay and consider a re-release when the prices get silly 🙂
While looking at puzzles from 1974 I noticed one called the Letter Carrier by Ravensburger, from a painting by Carl Spitzweg (died 1885). It seemed familiar, and look at this:
There’s a lot more detail in the cartoon version, and while you can’t see it in the picture from the puzzle, it says “Im Rosenthal” both in the painting and the puzzle.
It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the elements in Ryba’s version come from other paintings by Spitzweg. Anyway, the Romantic Town images were released twice earlier, in 1986 and in 2006. On the 1986 version, it even says “frei nach Spitzweg” (freely after Spitzweg”).
I have a database with information about my puzzles (past and present) and when I’ve assembled them. This record goes back to October 2007, so that I have a more or less complete record of my puzzling activities for the past 11 years. Here’s a breakdown with number of puzzles completed and pieces placed.
| Year | Puzzles | Pieces |
| 2008 | 23 | 37 000 |
| 2009 | 22 | 33 040 |
| 2010 | 6 | 14 500 |
| 2011 | 12 | 19 500 |
| 2012 | 6 | 22 000 |
| 2013 | 6 | 7 000 |
| 2015 | 6 | 12 000 |
| 2016 | 27 | 35 500 |
| 2017 | 45 | 55 000 |
| 2018 | 75 | 85 659 |
Even though 2014 is missing, I did do some puzzling. I worked on and off on a rather difficult 5000-piece puzzle that I finished in January 2015. From the autumn of 2012 to the spring of 2016 I studied (for a degree in software engineering), and that obviously severely limited the time I had for puzzling. After I completed my degree I’ve been puzzling more and more… I don’t expect I’ll keep it up, though. I will always do some puzzling, but some years I seem to spend all my free time puzzling…
Here’s a breakdown of the year 2018 according to brand:
| Brand | Amount |
| Heye | 16 |
| Ravensburger | 12 |
| Schmidt | 7 |
| Grafika | 6 |
| Castorland | 4 |
| Clementoni | 3 |
| Educa | 3 |
| Piatnik | 3 |
| Tactic | 3 |
| Hope Alderley | 2 |
| Nathan | 2 |
| Peliko | 2 |
| Ricordi Arte | 2 |
| Art Puzzle | 1 |
| Calvendo | 1 |
| Cobble Hill | 1 |
| Eurographics | 1 |
| Falcon | 1 |
| Galison | 1 |
| Play Time | 1 |
| Pomegranate | 1 |
| White Mountain Puzzles | 1 |
| Wild Horse | 1 |
Heye and Ravensburger unsurprisingly well in front of the rest.
One more breakdown, according to piece count:
| Piece count | Amount |
| 1 000 | 39 |
| 500 | 14 |
| 1 500 | 11 |
| 3 000 | 4 |
| 2 000 | 3 |
| 200 | 2 |
| 4 000 | 1 |
| 759 | 1 |
Happy New Year!
I work at the Helsinki University Library. A couple of years ago my boss at the time, who also enjoys puzzles (many, many librarians do) said I should bring a puzzle to work. So I did. More than one, in fact. There’s a round table in one of our break rooms, and most of the time, there’s a puzzle on it.
Many colleagues started bringing in their own puzzles as well.
Before last Christmas, I decided to put a puzzle out for the customers as well. Just for the holidays. Well, it turned out to be so popular we couldn’t possibly stop 🙂 And the customers started bringing in their own puzzles as well.
When a puzzle is finished, the customers can break it up and bring the box to the service desk, where they get a new puzzle in exchange. A 1000-piece puzzle seldom takes more than a day, and there is almost always someone working on the puzzle.
The library has had a lot of positive feedback about the puzzles, with one customer saying that the puzzle makes the library seem like a friendly and welcoming place.
Heye’s catalogue for 2019 is available here! There’s some great stuff, but the best news is that Historia Comica Opus 2 will be re-released. I missed it the first time around and have been so cross with myself.
Historia Comica Opus 1 is the history of the world from the start of the current era in cartoon form:
Opus 2 goes backwards in time from there:
Drawn, of course, by my favourite Heye artist, Marino Degano.
Opus 1 was originally released as an 8000-piece version in the late 90s with the title “2000 Years”. I have it, and I’ve completed it, but no picture, so you’ll have to take my word for it 🙂 It came in two 4000-piece bags, but I was too lazy to put it back like that -next time it really is one 8000-piece puzzle.
I have the 4000 piece version (Historia Comica Opus 1), but I’ve not completed it yet. So happy that I’m going to get my hands on Opus 2!
After Opus 2, my favourite new puzzle is the new entry in the Zoo series (Australian Habitat, also by Degano). Prades’ History River, Berman’s Patisserie and Adolfsson’s Regatta will also be joining me at some point…
Although I’ve been puzzling for as long as I can remember (I was born in 1968), I only started photographing puzzles occasionally in the mid 90s. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to date the pictures. Below is the first 5000-piece puzzle I ever completed, Park by Ravensburger. Not the easiest picture, but I got almost all my puzzles from flea markets at the time, so I did whatever I happened to get. I don’t have it anymore, but apparently, if I did, I could make a nice profit out of it. Someone wanted 85 € for one over on Rare Puzzles. According to the same source the puzzle was produced in 1985.
I also found pictures of another 5000-piece puzzle that I got for my birthday, although I don’t remember what year it was, but it will have been in the mid- to late 90s.
There was even a picture of me working on this puzzle, on the floor in my bathrobe 🙂
I also remember my first 3000-piece puzzle quite well, but I don’t have a picture of it. I found this one online:
According to this the puzzle was produced in 1986. I completed it in the late 80s. I also remember spilling coke on some of the pieces causing them to swell, but I still managed to finish. Since then I try to keep my drinks away from my puzzles 🙂
A few days ago, a friend sent me this link with an amazing story about an artist called Tim Klein, who combines identically cut puzzles to make new images. Here are even more images on Tim Klein’s own page. The combined puzzles are for sale, although many are sold out. The train-horse is my favourite.
In the story above, Tim Klein credits Mel Andringa with the idea, and he was apparently the first artist to use this technique. Googling Mel Andringa brought up some more great images, like this:
I am definitely going to try this one day, but I think it might be much more difficult than you might imagine combining images in an entertaining way. Which is why these guys are artists, I guess 🙂
In Helsinki, I have no table space available for puzzling, so I now use cardboard sheets both for spreading out the pieces and for assembling puzzles. I used to assemble puzzles on the floor, but I’m too old to spend hours on my knees crawling around. The floor was alright for 1000-1500 pieces, but with larger puzzles, there was also the problem of not being able to vacuum until the puzzle was finished. I once had a 5000 piece puzzle on the floor for about six months…
The sheets of cardboard that I use are 70 x 50 cm, which fits a 1000 piece puzzle of most European brands more or less exactly. For 1500 and 2000 pieces I need two sheets, and for 3000 pieces four sheets. The largest puzzle I’ve completed this way was 5000 pieces, on six sheets of cardboard. If you want to take a longer break from a puzzle, you just stack the sheets on top of each other and put the entire stack on top of a cupboard and forget about it until you’re ready to go on. I find the simple sheets of cardboard much more practical than any commercial alternatives, and believe me, I have tried them all. Many are unnecessarily heavy, and the ones where you roll up the puzzle work well for storing finished puzzles, but half-finished puzzles tend to fall apart, at least if I’m the one doing the rolling. My only problem with the cardboard is, that pieces sometimes fall off when you move them around, especially around the edges. That is why I almost never do the edges first anymore.
Because I now have the large table in Dortmund, I don’t do puzzles larger than 2000 pieces in Helsinki anymore.
I have some photographs of finished puzzles where I no longer have the puzzles, or any idea of the name and / or brand. I completed these puzzles in the mid or late 90s, then snapped a picture but failed to record any details of the puzzles or when exactly I took the picture. Here they are:
If anyone reading this happens to have some information about these puzzles I would be very happy to hear about it.
I used to sort. When I started a puzzle larger than 1000 pieces, I would start by sorting the pieces according to the colour into old flowerpots. I hated it. Not only was it tedious, but, as anyone who has ever done this knows, you will make a lot of mistakes, because your ability to correctly identify what colour goes where develops as you are working on the puzzle.
Because I am incredibly lazy, what irked me more than anything was that to sort a piece I would turn it the right way up, but after it went into the pot I was no better off than when I opened the box – some pieces with the picture side up, some not. I ended up turning the same pieces over many times and hated it.
After many, many years, I finally came up with a simple solution. I spread all the pieces out on sheets of cardboard and turned them the right way up. From these, I then pick whatever colour I am currently working on.
Sometimes I use a separate sheet to put the pieces I’ve picked. This way sorting becomes more flexible, and you can do it as needed while puzzling, not as a separate chore that I never enjoyed.
There is one situation where there is no way getting around sorting (in the sense of going through all pieces and assigning each to a category). When I have a monochrome area where the picture on the pieces is no help at all, I sort the pieces according to shape (“two pegs opposite” in one pile, “three pegs” in another and so on). Helps with the “brute force” approach often needed to complete the monochrome parts.
Puzzler1909 