I’m not sure how many of these images are references to specific books, but I definitely see the portrait of Dorian Gray, maybe Wuthering Heights on the left, and both the coffin and the coach reminds me of Dracula. Fun, but maybe not quite as much fun as I expected.

The puzzle is from the Gibsons Book Club series. Qualitywise, the puzzle was good, but I was sad to see that Gibsons seem to have gone back to their old type of waxy finish. I very much preferred the smooth, silky finish that they’ve had in the past few years. Oh, well.

This puzzle was released to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in the summer of 2022. I had been meaning to get a puzzle to do after the queen has passed, and I put in an order on August 28. Two weeks later the queen had died, but since my order contained a lot puzzles that were not in stock, I decided to wait. Well, I finally got tired of waiting and cancelled the remaining two puzzles that still weren’t in stock. So here, finally, my tribute to Her Majesty Elizabeth II, who was also a puzzler.

The puzzle was easy and fun. There are images of the Queen, her parents, her sister, and her husband.

For some reason, I really enjoy puzzling vehicles, not just cars, but trains and ships as well. Otherwise, I’ve never been that interested in cars, but I love them in puzzles. Add some signs with text, and I’m pretty much guaranteed to love a puzzle – and I did!

A Gibsons collage with toys and games. This continues the recent trend where 1000-piece Gibsons are excellent quality, and 500-piece ones are pretty bad. They must use different subcontractors. This was similar to the Jumbo Wasgij-puzzles, it has the same waxy finish, and a similar cut. It also says Made in the Netherlands on the box, so it may not be entirely accidental. (There was no indication of where the previous substandard 500-piece puzzle was made, I checked.)

Anyway, the puzzle was great fun, even though there were few of my favourite toys in there.

Here’s one that I have fond memories of:

Basically a big, air-filled ball that you could hop around on, holding on to the “ears”. Mine was orange, and I don’t think it had a face painted on.

Football and games. None of the board games are familiar to me.

This was a great image, and the quality was not as bad as my last 500 piece Gibsons. It’s ribbon cut, which I don’t like, for some reason, and the fit wasn’t great (but OK).

I’ve done some really lovely 1000 piece Gibsons in between (they were grid cut and great in every way), but I wasn’t happy with The Missing Piece. Even so, turns out I was lucky, because I saw someone post about the same puzzle on FB, and they had entire rows of pieces missing, and doubles of other pieces.

Anyway, mediocre quality, but it was still pretty fun to put together!

Nice image of partying cats. This was again a Gibsons of excellent quality, but it’s not a new puzzle. The last new 500 piece Gibsons puzzle that I bought was awful. This was fun and easy.

This looks like my favourite, ice cream with Amarena cherries and whipped cream (Amarena-Becher in German):

I actually gave this puzzle away when I moved in 2013, but then someone brought it into work (I don’t remember who got the puzzle in 2013, but it was obviously a colleague), and now I have it back 🙂 I completed the puzzle for the first time in May 2012, and I posted about it in April this year. A rerun, I’m afraid 🙂 It’s still complete, even after its travels. Also, it was still great fun working on it.