A puzzle from the Heye Elixir-series, my first, I think. I’m not usually a fan of the gothic-type images (also, they look really difficult), but somehow, I loved this one. It wasn’t easy, but there was enough variaton in the background colour so that it wasn’t too bad, either.

Since I switched to posting twice a week in November 2019 after posting daily for a year, I’ve built up about 30 extra posts. I’m now going to post one puzzle a day in January, and in February I will go back to my normal schedule (definitely every Friday and mostly on Tuesdays as well).

Here’s a vintage Heye from 1988, my last puzzle for 2020, to start off with. Two pieces missing, but this was a joy to put together. The cut was probably the best I’ve ever seen in a Heye, with very distinct piece shapes.

I didn’t understand the title at first – I mean, there was a lot of of 2000-stuff in the late 90s, but this is from 1988. And then I noticed, the sea is not water, but oil:

So, a warning about what our beaches may look like in 2000 if pollution continues, I presume.

A wonderful Marino Degano image from 2006. I bought this used on ebay, but it turned out to be complete. The edges were in a separate bag, and since there’s a border, I did them last.

Some of the pieces were strangely discoloured, and this can be seen most clearly in the areas where you could see a background colour, like on the image below. The pieces have definitely not gotten wet, because in my experience that always leaves some permanent swelling, and the only other thing I can think of is light. But that doesn’t make much sense either, because it looks like only some pieces have been exposed to light. I could understand discolouration by fading if the puzzle had been mounted at some time, but that wouldn’t affect some pieces this randomly. If anyone has a theory what caused this, I would love to hear it. It did make the background areas a bit more difficult than they would otherwise have been – in busy puzzles like this they’re usually the easiest part.

Otherwise, the puzzle was not all that easy, but a joy from start to finish. In case I’ve not mentioned it often enough, Marino Degano is my favourite Heye artist.

La mamma at her stove:

The ketchup police writes a ticket…

… although there seem to be more serious crimes to investigate:

In Degano puzzles I always look for evidence of football, and I usually find it:

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All in all a great puzzle, I loved working out all of the funny scenes.

This is post number 500 on my blog! I missed my two-year anniversary at the end of October, despite WordPress reminding me, but here’s a dancing house to celebrate both post no 500 and two years 🙂

Funny image by RJ Crisp. I was surprised to find out that this house actually exists, in Prague. It’s usually called the Dancing House, althoug the American architect used the name Ginger and Fred as a working name (after Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, of course. More on wikipedia).

Some boys are mooning the city from a tram.

Hippes get a surprise hair cut.

Not a neighbor I would choose…

More adorable Zozoville monsters! I definitely want to do every puzzle from this series, I’m working on getting them all.

The images in the series seem especially suited to puzzles because there is so much subtle variation in the backgrounds that they never become really difficult or monotonous. And of course, I love all the monsters 🙂

I couldn’t remember anything about the first time I did this puzzle, but I thought it must have been fun, and it was! Not the easiest puzzle I’ve ever done, it took me almost a week, but I loved it from start to finish. One piece missing.

There are, of course, lots of funny details. Here’s the classic husband-home-early scene.

Baby is not happy with mom’s dancing partner.

I think this may the only puzzle I’ve seen with drug use 🙂

There was one more 1500 piece Heye that I did again, Ahoy!, but I forgot to take a photo. That also had a piece missing. Three 1500 piece Heyes, all with a piece missing, and all in triangular boxes. Coincidence? I think not 🙂 It’s more difficult to get the pieces back in a triangular box, and it’s not as secure as a normal puzzle box. Oh well, it was still fun to revisit some puzzles that did in 2007 and 2009.

Ahoy! and Soft Rock are from 2007, and New York from 2008. Heye always has a rather loose fit, but the ones from 2007 are extremely loose, wheras New York has a slightly tighter fit that was much more pleasant to work with. The current Heyes have a better fit than any of these, which is nice, because sometimes it feels like it’s all downhill with puzzle quality.

Another puzzle I got back after giving it away. There’s one piece missing, but it’s almost impossible to see on this photo.

I have to say the pixellated image is not my favourite, just as last time. I began to enjoy it a lot more after I was about halfway through.

This may have been done specifically for Heye, or maybe they put the logo in an existing image.

 

Another Rosina Wachtmeister image, this time just 500 pieces. Again, I had a feeling that this should have been more entertaining than it was. I love the image, but somehow, it wasn’t that great of a puzzle to me. I know others feel differently, as there are plenty of puzzles in this series.

Four pieces in the top row were damaged.