I really enjoyed this! It’s my second 350-piece Peliko with three different piece sizes, and I was expecting to have the big pieces on top like last time. What I didn’t think of was that the first puzzle was portrait format, whereas this is landscape, so instead, I have the big pieces on the left. I like the way the smallest pieces are in the bottom right-hand corner, and the further away you get from the large, sleeping goat, the larger the pieces become 🙂 Definitely more fun than I expected.

 

This puzzle shows a board game that every Finnish child has played since it was released in 1951. There are round markers that are distributed on the red dots, and one of those represents the Star of Africa, a diamond, and the object is to find the diamond and bring it back to your starting point (for which you may choose Tangier or Cairo). In addition to the diamond, you may find lesser jewels that can be sold, and then you can fly, or take a boat, to get around faster. You can also turn up a robber and lose all your money. It’s a game of luck, not of skill.

As you can see, there are three different piece sizes, with the big pieces on top and the small on the bottom. The small pieces were really tiny. The quality isn’t that good (as usual with Peliko), but it was still great fun. I’ve played the game countless times as a child, and later as an adult with various children. I especially remember how the 3-4-year-old son of some friends had a meltdown after losing all his money to a robber, sweeping the entire game onto the floor. I remember thinking this is one way Finnish children learn to deal with disappointment, I’m sure I’ve done the same as a child 🙂 It’s also possible to play without the robbers.

Even though the game represents lovely childhood memories to me, it has been pointed out that it can also be seen as an example of European colonialism, with Europeans robbing the wealth of Africa.

I rarely buy children’s puzzles, but occasionally I get some when someone sells puzzles as a bundle. This puzzle features Tatu and Patu, who are the protagonists in a popular series of children’s books in Finland. In fact, only one of them is present in the actual puzzle, and he seems to be having a restless night.

In the top left-hand corner, you can see both Tatu and Patu. I’ve actually read some of the Tatu and Patu books (to my brother’s children), and they are pretty entertaining.

He was reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

On the other side of the puzzle, there’s “the world’s most boring bedtime story”. I had to use two pieces of cardboard to flip the puzzle and ended up redoing part of it anyway, the fit is definitely not tight. I read the story, it’s about someone called Silverhair, who goes into the woods to pick blueberries and ends up at a house belonging to some bears. He deliberates endlessly whether to eat some of the porridge he finds already served at the table and how much money he should leave for it and so on. Eventually, he makes himself a cheese sandwich instead, leaves two euros for the bears and goes home. The end.

The Groke is a rather complex Moomin character. On the one hand, she is threatening and scary, but she also represents loneliness. Everything she touches freezes. She longs for contact with others and warmth but is unable to form relationships. She doesn’t speak.

Here she is seen gliding through the forest, and you can see the ice forming around her.

This puzzle shows a famous scene from Swedish history (technically, it also qualifies as Finnish history since Finland was part of Sweden at the time), the ship Vasa floundering practically in the harbour on its maiden voyage in 1628. Since it was very close to shore, most people could be saved, but about 30 lost their lives. It was humiliating for the king to have his new flagship fail so spectacularly, but an inquest was unable to determine the cause of the disaster. Experts have since come to the conclusion that the centre of gravity was too high, which caused the ship to flounder.

The wreck is just the start of the story, though. In 1961, after years of careful planning, the wreck was brought up from the bottom of the sea. The shore was lined with school children who had been given the day off to be able to watch the old ship rise again after over 300 years. It is now in a purpose-built museum, and if you are ever in Stockholm, you should go and see it. It’s a spectacular exhibit and very well presented. I’ve seen the ship twice, the first time as a child when it was still in the temporary location known as the Vasa Shipyard, and again about five years ago in the new museum.

Anyway, back to the puzzle. It’s a Peliko puzzle, bad quality as usual, and with one edge piece missing and one extra piece. Oh well. I also get more and more annoyed that they don’t bother to name their puzzles. The artist is Mauri Kunnas, a prolific children’s book author.