A puzzle from the Kaj Stenvall Collection, with a cranky duck in a boat. This has only pieces of the basic shape with two tabs opposite, and it makes a big difference. There are a lot more candidates for each spot when you can’t rule any pieces out on basic shape. While the quality is pretty good, I had some cases where I had placed a piece wrong, and only noticed after I couldn’t get any further. It was possible to identify the wrongly placed pieces, but I had to look really closely.
Firmly on the Ground by Kaj Stenvall, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on April 18th, 2020.
The trees were the most difficult part.
Here’s a close-up of the duck from the box. You can see the texture of the canvas, which is a great help while puzzling. You can’t see it in the really dark parts, though.
I wrote earlier about the puzzles by Tactic with images by Kaj Stenvall, and I decided to try to get all of them. They are all out of print, so I’m getting them second hand, although some are still factory sealed. I’ve been able to identify 30 puzzles, two with 500 pieces and the rest with 1000 pieces. There may be more, of course, as there is no complete list by Tactic, or by anyone else that I can find.
I currently have 19 of the 30, and four more are already on the way. They are good quality, although some of them have only pieces of the basic shape with two tabs opposite.
I started on one, called Firmly on the Ground, and unfortunately, this is one of those. Some pieces were still stuck together from the previous assembly, and I’m taking advantage of that 🙂
Despite being 50, I only very recently got a driver’s license and a car (I don’t really need  one, it’s more of a luxury), and on Saturday I drove about 100 km north to Hämeenlinna and spent the day going through local flea markets looking for puzzles. Exercising enormous self-restraint I came back with only six puzzles:
These are all factory sealed. The Olympic Stadium is probably horrible quality, but I like the image and for 1 EUR I’m definitely prepared to try it.Cranky ducks, ice cream and a Klimt painting (the Klimt is a Clementoni).
The prices were much lower than online or in Helsinki.
In one charity shop, there was a puzzle out for the customers – the sign says “Let’s puzzle together!”. A 500-piece Ravensburger Neuschwanstein-puzzle (of course). I put one piece in.
One thing has started to bother me: where are all the Heye puzzles? I hardly ever see used Heye puzzles on offer in Finland, but I know many new ones are sold. I’ve bought Heye puzzles since the 90s, and the local store where I got Opus 2 always has all the new Heye puzzles. In fact, I talked to their jigsaw puzzle expert once (they have a lot of board games, not just jigsaws), and he confirmed that they always get all available Heye puzzles. So where do they all go? Perhaps they get sold on eBay for large sums? Still, not everyone would realize some Heye puzzles are valuable, surely? It’s a mystery.
I’ve been buying quite a few of the Kaj Stenvall puzzles by Tactic, featuring Donald Duck lookalikes. Yes, that’s a black duck in the bed, although you can’t see it very well.
Good Morning or Good Night by Kaj Stenvall, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on February 27th, 2019.
I used to avoid these because of the large monochrome areas, but sometimes it’s nice to work on (moderately sized) areas where you have only the shape to go on, if the quality is good, of course. I only sorted the last 100 pieces according to shape, so this was actually pretty easy. And enjoyable.
I did the orange bedspread first, then the darker pieces, then on to the white, and finally the last 100 pieces in between.
I found two puzzles with the same cut! They are Tactic 500-piece puzzles, Waterhouse and Palm Beach. Makes sense that smaller manufacturers would use the same dies for all puzzles with the same piece count, whereas large manufacturers have different dies and even the same images can be differently cut. As I suspected, the mashup results were hardly spectacular, but I’ll continue to keep my eyes open for possible combinations.
Added some beach and palms to cheer the duck up.Phantom duck in the palms.Moving the sections around.
That was fun! Hope to find some more striking combinations next time.
Logos, Tactic, 500 pieces. Completed on November 28th, 2018.
Encouraged by my flea market purchases I got a couple of new Tactic puzzles. Unfortunately, the quality is not the same in the newer puzzles. The pieces are much thinner, although not so thin that it’s a problem. It reminds me of Castorland. More annoying was that pieces don’t align exactly:
The left-hand piece is “shorter”.
This was, of course, a really easy puzzle, so I don’t know how this would work out in a more challenging puzzle. It seems that the quality has gone from excellent to passable 😦 Some of the edge pieces weren’t properly separated, but I pulled them apart.
Kaj Stenvall Collection: Waterhouse (1993), Tactic, 500 pieces. Completed on November 26th, 2018.
This went really fast, only at the end with all the black pieces left did I slow down a bit. Since it’s a painting the texture of the canvas and brushstrokes helped with the lighter sections. Anyway, really good quality took me about two hours to complete.
The painting is by Finnish artist Kaj Stenvall, but if it looks familiar, it may be because of Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott:
John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888. Inspired by Tennyson’s poem. Also available as a puzzle!
In 1989 Stenvall published his first paintings with familiar-looking ducks in surprising situations. He’s still painting new duck paintings. Some, but not all, are versions of famous paintings.
Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and Stenvall’s version.
Whistler’s Mother and Sky Channel by Stenvall.
The paintings are really popular, and many are available as posters. Tactic also released some of them as puzzles. The puzzle series has been discontinued, but it is not rare to find them at flea markets in Finland.
If you’re interested, you can find more of Stenvall’s work here. It’s not all ducks, in fact, the recent ones are mostly Trump and Putin 🙂
And if you should happen to come across a Tactic puzzle, the quality is great! (UPDATE: The new Tactic puzzles are not as good and have much thinner pieces.)
On Saturday I enjoyed myself so much looking for puzzles that I went back for more on Sunday.
Lighthouses by Clementoni. Factory sealed and great images!The Royal Castle Drottningholm in Stockholm, Sweden.I like these old views of cities, this is probably from the 60s or 70s, Edinburgh. I don’t think I’ve ever had puzzle by Ingham Day before.The pieces are stored according to section, so this is probably not going to be too difficult, regardless of quality 🙂This has no title, and the Dutch brand, Wild Horse, is unknown to me. I got this for free, otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken it.Another unknown brand, Sure-Lox, is apparently Canadian. The picture is of the Royal Palace in Madrid.Some Star Wars fun courtesy of FX Schmid.And one more Tactic puzzle. I will be writing more about this soon.
Palm Beach, Tactic, 500 pieces, completed on November 18th, 2018.
Tactic is a Finnish games manufacturer that also does puzzles. The quality is excellent, the cardboard is thick and pieces only fit where they belong. Unfortunately, I usually find the images quite boring, or too difficult, so that this is only my second Tactic puzzle. It’s too bad really, I would love to support a domestic brand. I feel they are probably better at other kinds of games, but it’s especially annoying when it’s just the images, everything else is fine!
UPDATE: Newer Tactic puzzles are sometimes very bad quality.
I bought this used, and I could see right away there was some damage. The picture had separated from the cardboard in two pieces.
I did the sky first, then on with the sand. So far, the puzzle was really easy.
The vegetation was the hardest part, but even that was not really hard.
Here’s a closeup of the damaged section. Someone must have spilt a drink on this one, and the damage was quite bad. You have to use force to get the pieces into place, and when I take it apart it’s going to make the damage worse.
Apart from the damage, it was quite enjoyable, but I think this puzzle has come to the end of its life cycle.
Puzzler1909 