It’s one year today since I started this blog. To celebrate here’s a slightly naughty picture of a naked man sleeping. Notice how the glare conveniently doubles as censorship 🙂
Black and white images are always difficult, and this was no exception.
While I don’t have a picture without glare, I do have one where the glare is in a different place. So, if you want to see what the glare is covering in the picture above, here it is:
I love this painting by Salvador DalÃ, and it also makes a great puzzle. It was painted in 1931, and since 1934 it is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I’ve passed on many DalÃ-puzzles even though I like his paintings because they often have large monochrome areas and would be too difficult. I still have this and want to do it again one day.
This was so much fun! I’d had a period of maybe six months in 2007 when I didn’t do any puzzles (I was sure it was a couple of years, but I can see from the pictures I’ve taken that it was only months). Then I bought one as a gift for a friend and decided to buy myself one as well. This is the puzzle I bought. I still have it, and I’m definitely doing it again 🙂
The Colosseum in Rome. Emperor Vespasian began construction in 70 AD, and the building was finished by his son, emperor Titus in 80 AD. It was originally known as Amphitheatrum Flavium, the amphitheatre of the Flavians, as Vespasian and Titus had the family name Flavius. It’s been estimated that it could hold up to 80 000 spectators. In addition to gladiatorial combats, other types of spectacles could also be organized, and the most exotic was surely the mock sea battles. In the middle ages, it was no longer used for entertainment but had other uses, such as housing. I wonder if the Colosseum was considered a desirable address. Now it is, of course, one of Rome’s top tourist attraction.
The puzzle itself was a bit on the difficult side, although the great Ravensburger quality helped, of course.
Now, this is a really old world map!
If you think taking a closer look will help you see something familiar on the map, think again:
I could not make out a single place on this map, it could just as well have been entirely imaginary instead of a real map of the world. Regardless, it was a really fun puzzle to do.
The Temple of the Inscriptions in Mexico. The temple was built by the Mayans as a monument to a 7th Century ruler called Pakal. The many inscriptions in the temple have helped in the study of the ancient Mayan language. Even though the structure was well known even earlier, it wasn’t until the 1950s that Pakal’s tomb was found in the temple.
Glow-in-the-dark celestial map. This was quite tricky, with lots of dark blue. Unfortunately, no picture taken in the dark, but it’s difficult to get those pictures to work anyway.
Unlike the earlier fake Egyptian art, this is the real thing, a photo from the tomb of Ramses I in Luxor. Here’s a photo taken in 2004.
Ramses himself is in the middle, facing him is Anubis and behind him Horus. Since Anubis is associated with mummification and the afterlife, I assume Ramses is being escorted to the underworld.
So, I’m back in Helsinki and working, and with less time to puzzle, there will again be more of my old photos.
This puzzle was released by Heye in 2007, but there had actually been a 1000-piece version in 1993, called Soft Rock Café, with almost the same image.
It’s good to know that good images can be released again even after many years!
On this day 11 years ago…
This puzzle will have been produced in 2007 or shortly before (say, 2005-2007), but there was an earlier version of the same image, released in 1991, with 1000 pieces:
The earlier version was called Nelson’s Crew, also published by Heye. I don’t know why it says Papillon on the box, but Fun Puzzle was definitely a Heye series. I found a few others with the Papillon-logo (here and here, for example), and they were all pre 1993. Since 1993 there is the Heye logo instead.
I think I got my first Heye cartoon puzzle in the late 90s, but they’ve been around for longer than that. I don’t think I ever had one from the Fun Puzzle series.
Puzzler1909 