Great fun, old James Bond movie posters with Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
James Bond 007, Ravensburger, 500 pieces. Completed on December 29th, 2018.“Everything he touches turns to excitement” 😀
I actually did this one once earlier, in May 2017 (no pics from then, though). I did it again partly because I was hoping for a mashup with the previous puzzle, Colourful Ribbons. That didn’t work, unfortunately. While each piece has the same basic shape (same number of pegs pointing in the same direction) as the corresponding piece in the other puzzle, the cut is still different, so that the pieces won’t fit in the other puzzle.
Ravensburger has a new series (currently 3 puzzles) that combines a puzzle and an escape room game. I won’t show the finished puzzle since it’s not quite the same as the image on the box.
The Observatory, Ravensburger, 759 pieces. Completed on December 26th, 2018. Despite the lower piece count, the puzzle is almost 70×50 cm, normal size for a 1000 piece puzzle.
The box contains the puzzle, the solution in a sealed envelope and a booklet with instructions.
These are the instructions. A bit of backstory, then it’s time to assemble the puzzle. One strange thing is the line “The rectangular pieces in the bag are not part of the puzzle and can be discarded.”These are the instructions. A bit of backstory, then it’s time to assemble the puzzle. One strange thing is the line “The rectangular pieces in the bag are not part of the puzzle and can be discarded.”Working on it…
Then you have a really nice puzzle to complete, and afterwards, you can start looking for tasks to solve in the image… As stated in the instructions, there are 6 mysteries in the picture. The answer is always a number. Finally, you have to put it all together …
There is help online (the QR code in the instructions), and of course the solution in the envelope, and I needed a lot of help. In fact, I wish the help had been more detailed, I wasn’t always certain how I was supposed to get to the correct answer, even when I had the hints and the answer…
Anyway, I really enjoyed this enormously, it would have been lovely as just a normal puzzle, but then I got to save the world as well! With a liiiittle help, of course 🙂 I already ordered another puzzle from the series, and will probably get the third one as well.
UPDATE: Here’s my best shot of the bottom right corner, requested by Cindy:
The only good thing about this puzzle was that I paid nothing for it 😀 I bought another puzzle at a flea market, and the seller wanted to get rid of this as well. I don’t blame her.
This unnamed puzzle by Wild Horse (Holland) was of quite poor quality, with thin pieces often fitting where they don’t belong. I almost gave up on the sky, I thought I was hopelessly deadlocked, but the problem was that there were missing pieces. If this had been a 1000 piece puzzle I don’t think I would have finished it. Six missing pieces.
Romantic Town By Day by Ryba, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 24th, 2018.
I did the first of Heye’s new puzzles! This one is part of the new Romantic Town-series, where the image is continued over several puzzles, like Degano’s Zoo-series, but the images also work as separate puzzles.
The date on the bag says November 2nd, 2018. Fresh puzzle!
This was one of those puzzles where you do the sky first because it’s the easiest part 🙂 I’ve noticed this with other busy cartoon puzzles as well.
After the sky it got tricky. I was well over halfway there when I found the last edge piece – I was already convinced it was missing. Should know better by now 🙂I didn’t quite understand why all of the characters have wings and haloes. Also, there isn’t much romance in the image.Perhaps these two just got married? It’s not clear from the picture.
This was OK, but I still like Degano’s Zoo-series more.
On Friday, December 21st 2018, the last piece of coal was brought up from a mine in Germany. It is now officially over. Ever since the middle ages coal has been brought up from the ground in the Ruhr area, where Dortmund is located. In later times much of that coal was used in producing iron and steel, but since the late 70s heavy industry, as well as coal mining, has been winding down, causing a painful structural change in the area, with very high unemployment. In Dortmund, coal mining ended in 1987, and now the last mine in Bottrop is also closed.
The area has adapted and turned to other ways of making a living (in Dortmund, there are, for example, a lot of insurance companies, and many work in technology), but coal mining and heavy industry is still part of the cultural heritage. Some of the large headframes that still dominate the landscape have been turned into museums, as is the case with Zeche Zollverein in Essen, seen on this puzzle. Unfortunately, I don’t have a puzzle with a headframe from Dortmund. Or Bottrop 🙂
Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Calvendo. Completed on August 30th, 2018.
I didn’t know the manufacturer, Calvendo, from before, but it turned out to be a good quality puzzle. As it indeed should be, at 30€ for 1000 pieces! I bought this from one of my usual online stores (https://www.puzzle-offensive.de/) and was happy to find a puzzle with a Ruhr-area theme, nothing from Dortmund though.
Recently I checked out the website of the manufacturer, and found that they have lots and lots of puzzles available, and several with Dortmund themes! It seems that you can sell posters, calendars and puzzles of your pictures on the site, and Calvendo prints them, cuts them and sends them out. The catalogue is enormous! I will definitely be ordering some of those Dortmund puzzles, but I’ll wait until summer when I’ll be in Germany for many weeks, because who knows how long these take to ship.
[Moomin cartoon], Peliko, 500 pieces. Completed on December 19th, 2018.The Moomins first appeared in much-loved cartoons and books by Tove Jansson (1914-2001) There are also many adaptations for television, including a Japanese-Dutch-Finnish co-production from the early 90s that made the Moomins popular in many countries. The Japanese have always been especially fond of the Moomins, and Japanese tourists tend to leave Finland with plenty of Moomin stuff. There’s even a Moomin shop at the Helsinki airport.
Tove Jansson was a great lady. I remember seeing an interview with her when she was already quite old, and the reporter asked something slightly patronizing about wrinkles. She pulled herself up in mock outrage and said “Wrinkles? Wrinkles? I only have one wrinkle and I’m sitting on it!”. She was a national treasure. (I seem to be promoting a lot of Finnish artists – it certainly wasn’t my intention when I started the blog 🙂
Anyway, back to the puzzle. Like the previous Peliko puzzles, this is also of quite poor quality, with thin pieces. Again, the image prevents pieces fitting where they don’t belong being a problem.
Some images appeared multiple times.
Here you can see how the pieces don’t always align perfectly.
I like their images enough to keep doing these puzzles anyway 🙂
For the next week or so I’m not expecting to get much puzzling done. I’m doing other fun things though, going to soccer games, visiting friends, singing Christmas carols in the stadium with 50 000 other fans, and baking cakes 🙂 I still have pictures of puzzles I’ve completed earlier, though, and I’ll be putting up some of those.
I got this one from a friend who did not enjoy it at all. She was like “Take this puzzle, I never want to see it again”. I quite enjoyed it 🙂 The face was the most difficult part, everwhere else there were plenty of clues, like text or the shade of the background colour changing.
I used to dislike doing close-ups of faces, but I seem to have gotten over that.
A 500 piece puzzle from Finnish manufacturer Peliko.
[Christmas decorations] by Mauri Kunnas, Peliko, 500 pieces. Completed on December 11th, 2018. Somehow I couldn’t get a better picture, sorry.Not great quality, the pieces are thin, and with a different image I can also imagine that it might be difficult to know whether a piece belongs or not, but with all the detail in this, it wasn’t a problem. Also annoying, the puzzle has no title, I just called it “Christmas decorations”.
The artist, Mauri Kunnas, is a very successful illustrator of children’s books in Finland. Before he turned to children’s books he used to do a very popular comic strip in a youth magazine in the 70s and 80s. The comics were usually parodies of movies, TV-series or bands.
Here’s the second half of a Psycho parody. You can probably recognize a couple of scenes despite all the Finnish 🙂
I wish they had chosen images from his earlier works for puzzles 🙂
Puzzler1909 