Tag: 2020

Two Lighthouses, 2020-10-11 & 2020-10-17

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A Ravensburger double pack with two lighthouses:

The one on the left is from Brittany, France. I was surprised to see that the one on the right is called Lake Constance, since I recognized it as Bodensee, but it turns out, Bodensee is called Lake Constance in English 🙂 Unusually for Ravensburger, the titles were in English only. The box was no bigger than the usual 1000-piece boxes, proving once again that the puzzle boxes are twice as big as they need to be.

I did Lake Constance first. It was a pleasant puzzle of excellent quality, not too difficult.

Lindau, Lake Constance, Ravensburger 1000 pieces. Completed on October 11, 2020.

The other puzzle was, of course, a lot more difficult. At least it would have been, if I hadn’t used the finished first puzzle as a blueprint. The two puzzles had exactly the same die cut pattern, so I started building the second on top of the other:

Took me a while to work out that it fits upside down on the first puzzle. Anyway, this was a lot easier when I knew exactly what piece shape I was looking for all the time.

At some point, I sorted the remaining pieces according to shape, and then I put in all the pieces with shapes other than two-tabs-opposite. This is what it looked like with only two-tabs-opposite-pieces left.

The finished puzzle:

Brittany, France, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on October 17, 2020.

New Exit Puzzles

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The latest three Exit-Puzzles are branded as Exit Puzzle Kids, but the only real difference to the previous puzzles that I can see is that the stories are a bit tamer, in the previous puzzles they almost always involved imminent danger of death. I still find the puzzles really enjoyable, but I couldn’t be be bothered to spend much time on the mysteries. While I do like the big pieces, I still prefer the 759-piece Exit-puzzles.

So far, I’ve gotten all of the Exit-puzzles that are available (14 puzzles), but I think I’m going to cut down a bit now, and only get the ones where I really love the image. My favourite of these three was the amusement park, and the backstory actually sounded like a promising start to a horror movie 🙂 I finished all three puzzle in one day.

I’ve added links to photos of the finished puzzles to my spoiler page for the series.

Monsters Night Out, 2020-10-30

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Another Sunsout, and it was unfortunately back to the dull blades. I had a much better Sunsout puzzle in between, but with this it again seemed like it had been cut with dull blades. I often had to use force to press in pieces in places where they most certainly belonged.

Monsters Night Out by Bill Bell, Sunsout, 1000 pieces. Completed on October 30, 2020.

As usual, the fun image made up for at least some of the bad quality. Happy Halloween!

The Lighthouse x 2, 2020-08-01 & 2020-08-03

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Sometimes I buy a bunch of puzzles as a bundle,  and that way I can end up with two copies of the same puzzle. That’s exactly what happened with this puzzle.

The boxes are identical…

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… but, turns out, the puzzles are not!

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The Lighthouse, Clementoni, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 1 & August 3, 2020.

They do, of course, look pretty much the same, but there were many differences. I did the second puzzle on top of the first, and pretty soon I realized that the there were tiny diffrences in the cut, so that pieces from one puzzle didn’t fit in the other.

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I tried switching the pieces in one corner, but nope, they don’t fit, although every piece was the same basic shape as its twin in the other puzzle, in fact they were almost the same with only small differences.

There were also differences in colour, especially the darker blue hues were different.

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What surprised me the most was  how the fit was very much different. Below is more or less the same section from each puzzle, and the one on the left had a perfect fit, lay completely flat and felt even when I ran my hand hand over it. The one on the right did not lay completely flat, you can see how the pieces don’t fit evenly, and I could most definitely feel the difference. If you look for it, I think you can also see the difference in the photo above with both of the completed puzzles. The “perfect” one is the one on top.

Here are some photos from the assembly of the second puzzle on top of the first. If doing a puzzle with the box image is like driving with a map, this was definitely like having GPS navigation 🙂

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This turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had anticipated! I actually have two copies of another puzzle as well, also Clementoni but 1500 pieces. I’ll probably do them the same way.

 

99 Beautiful Places on Earth, 2020-09-27

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Enjoyable collage, although I do prefer for the images to be a bit bigger. You end up relying on the image quite a lot when the individual images are this small. Also, some of these places I would think of as interesting rather than beautiful, Las Vegas, for example 🙂

99 Beautiful Places on Earth, Ravensburger, 1500 pieces. Completed on September 27, 2020.

B&T Brewing Company, 2020-10-04

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This is part of the Master Pieces Inside Out-series, where we are shown the inside and outside of various buildings, in this case a brewery. This was great fun!

Inside Out: B&T Brewing Company by Art Poulin, Master Pieces, 1000 pieces. Completed on October 4, 2020.
The different stages in beer production.
Upstairs there’s the president’s office and the board room.

I like Master Pieces puzzles, they have great images, but unfortunately, they aren’t often available in Europe, or if they are, they can be quite expensive. Not this time, though, I got this during a sale 🙂

St. Michael’s, 2020-10-09

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This Sunsout puzzle was great fun, and also good quality. The last Sunsout puzzle I did seemed like it had been cut with very dull blades, but this was great! I love the image, and especially the black and yellow car, of course 🙂

St. Michael’s by Ken Zilla, Sunsout, 1000 pieces. Completed on October 9, 2020.

An Unusual Couple, 2020-09-25

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This puzzle has seen better days, it was quite worn, and there were two pieces missing, as well as an extra piece. It was actually quite difficult. Also, I think it looks more like these two are meeting for the first time, I don’t think they’re a couple yet 🙂

An Unusual Couple, FX Schmid, 500 pieces. Completed on September 25, 2020.

Goal, 2020-09-25

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So much can change in a week! A week ago, I was complaining about not being able to see games live in the stadium, but for the the second home game of the season some tickets were made available for members who don’t have a season ticket, and I managed to get one! The game on Saturday was against Freiburg, the same opponent as the last time I was in the stadium in February. The game in February was a tense 1-0 win, but on Saturday there were proper offensive fireworks and a resounding 4-0! It felt so good to be back. Anyway, here’s another football related puzzle 🙂

Goal by Jan van Haasteren, Jumbo, 500 pieces. Completed on September 25, 2020.

There is so much going on here that I relied on the box image a little more than I prefer. A lot of funny details, as usual with a van Haasteren. The obligatory shark and some dentures on the run:

I can’t resist putting in a photo from Saturday. This is from right after the first goal: