Tag: 2022

Planet Earth, 2022-01-24

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My second Unidragon puzzle. This one I ordered directly from the Unidragon website, despite the fact that they had quite a few bad reviews. What people were mostly complaining about was that they were slow to ship puzzles, but I don’t mind that, I can wait. Except I didn’t have to, because this beauty was delivered very fast, and as promised dispatched from within the EU (which means no import duties or taxes).

Planet Earth, Unidragon, 500 pieces. Completed on January 24, 2022.

This was so much fun, with lots of whimsies and an interesting cut. This time I even remembered to assemble the puzzle on a piece of cardboard, so that I could easily flip it using another piece of cardboard:

I decided not to pull out the whimsies, there are so many of them. There are a lot of stars, and not just as whimsies, many connectors are also star-shaped.

Here are two versions of Saturn:

There’s also the sun:

There are also a lot of round objects, but I can’t tell what planets they represent, only Saturn is easily recognizable.

I like the way all the round objects are formed in different ways, concentric circles, three solid pieces, two spirals and so on.

All in alla great puzzle!

Monaco Classics, 2022-01-23

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Quite busy racing scene, a bit difficult in the beginning, but it got easier fast. I love Loup’s funny, big-nosed characters. Unfortunately, I managed to lose a piece.

Monaco Classics by Loup, Heye, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 23, 2022.

A very busy pit stop.

A note to (now retired) German race car driver Michael Schumacher from his wife Corinna (it’s actually spelled with a double n) :-). While this 1500-piece version is from 2019, the image was originally released as a 2000-piece puzzle in 1997, when Schumi was still very much active.

UPDATE 26.1.2022: I found the missing piece. It was in the fridge…

Submarine Fun, 2022-01-17

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I think this was my first Heye for this year. I’m sure there will be many more 🙂 While it’s not quite as busy as many Heye images, it was kind of difficult to know where to start. I ended up doing the sharks first (I’m pretty sure they’re sharks, although they behave more like dolphins, and there are way less teeth than in most portrayals of shark). After I got going, the puzzle was great fun!

Submarine Fun by Uli Oesterle, Heye, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 17, 2022.
Lots of things going on inside the submarine, and I really liked how men and women seemed to be working together, and also wearing the same type of uniform. There’s plenty of leisure activities as well, as you can see.
There was also plenty of action on the surface.

1980s, 2022-01-14

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This was a very enjoyable puzzle, and also my first Re-marks. I got it in a swap with Stacey at MyJigsawJournal, so thank you, Stacey! Almost all of the things in this collage are things I remember, although much wasn’t really to my taste. When I think of 80s movies, I think more along the lines of Evil Dead and Nightmare on Elm Street, not Footloose and Flashdance 🙂

1980s, Re-marks, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 14, 2022.

I found the quality to be good, but not excellent, and it was certainly the best puzzle with a ribbon cut that I’ve ever done. I actually realized that my dislike of the ribbon cut is more to do with the fact that all of the ones I’ve done before have been rather poor quality than with the cut itself.

Here’s one show that I definitely watched:

The Golden Girls. The last of them, Betty White, passed away just before new year. I now know that she had a long career in American television before that, but the Golden Girls was the first I saw of her. What none of the obituaries that I read mentioned was her amazing portrayal of Catherine Piper in The Practice and Boston Legal – she was brillant, and so funny. RIP Betty White.

When I saw this piece, I immediately thought that Planet of Apes was much earlier than the 80s:

Turns out, it was a gremlin, not an ape:

It would be impossible to do puzzles without interpreting the individual pieces, but it can certainly lead you astray when you don’t have the complete picture 🙂

Windjammer Dar Pomorza, 2022-01-10

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Ass is a German producer of playing cards, and in the 80s, they also made puzzles. Ass means ace in German. I remember liking the brand in my youth, and I’ve wanted to one again, but there aren’t that many around anymore. This puzzle is from 1984, and I still liked the quality and the cut. That said, Ravensburger from the same time is even better.

Windjammer Dar Pomorza, Ass, 750 pieces. Completed on January 10, 2022.

I tried to find out what happened to Ass Puzzles, but Google was unhelpful. I did find out that there’s a brand (?) of puzzles called Asshole Jigsaw Puzzles, so I guess that’s something. There was an entry about Ass on German Wikipedia, but there was no mention of jigsaw puzzle production.

By the way, the ship in the puzzle also has a Wikipedia entry. It was built in Hamburg in 1909, and has had Polish owners since 1930. It is now a museum ship.

Breakfast in Paris, 2022-01-09

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I have a particular fondness for 500 piece Clementonis, and this was fantastic. I did it from the top down, starting with the sky and working myself down. The quality was, of course, great, and although I bought this used, it was in perfect condition.

Breakfast in Paris, Clementoni, 500 pieces. Completed on January 9, 2022.

Spirit of the Derby, 2022-01-08

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The image is a painting depicting the the Epsom Derby The artist, Terence Cuneo (1907-1996) was the official artist for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, according to Wikipedia. This painting was actually called Derby Day, not Spirit of the Derby, and it depicts a scene from the 1979 Derby (the first Derby was in 1780, and it’s still going strong).

Spirit of the Derby by T. Cuneo, Arrow, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 8, 2022.

I would have guessed the scene was from the 70s even if I hadn’t found a mention of it online. This man can only be from the 70s 🙂

The puzzle was not really good quality, the pieces are very thin, and pieces sometimes fit where they don’t belong, but the image helped here. The last Arrow puzzle I tried, I didn’t even finish, I just couldn’t get the sky right. I always thought Arrow was a British brand, but it says Made in Ireland on the box. The puzzle is also ribbon cut, which I don’t like, but despite this, and the quality, it was still a reasonably entertaining puzzle, thanks to the great image.

I’ve never been to any Derby, but I used to ride horses as a child, and I’ve read plenty about them. Lester Piggott is still the jockey with the most wins in the Epsom Derby (the last from 1983), and I remember reading about him. I also loved the thrillers by Dick Francis, all set in the horse racing world. His son has continued writing racing thrillers.

Poppy Meadow, 2022-01-06

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My first SpielSpass puzzle! It’s a triptych with a 1000-piece puzzle in the middle flanked by two 500-piece puzzles. It’s from 2007, and I got it, factory sealed, for 1 EUR. I did from left to right as three separate puzzles, I did not mix the bags.

Poppy Meadow, SpielSpass, 2×500 & 1×1000 pieces. Completed on January 6, 2022.

I haven’t seen many SpielSpass puzzles, and I’m not sure they even do puzzles anymore. This puzzle was clearly intended for the German market, since the title is given in German only (Mohnwiese, translated by me as Poppy Meadow). (SpielSpass is German and could be translated as GameFun or PlayFun.) It’s too bad that there aren’t more of these around, because the quality turned out to be good. The cut reminded me most of Heye, and the pieces were sturdy. Here’s a close up:

Only the poppies really stood out, so I started all of the three puzzles by pulling the red pieces and the edges. After that there was always a bit of uncertainty of what to do next, but this was the kind of puzzle that seemed almost to complete itself. Even when the conscious part of my brain didn’t know where a piece belonged, some other part told my hands what to do, and I kept placing the pieces correctly. Great puzzle, and much faster than I had anticipated 🙂

Central Station, 2022-01-03

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I’m not a fan of Educa, I find pieces often fit where they don’t belong, but with this image, I knew that wouldn’t be a problem. It turned out to be a fun and relatively easy, just as expected. I don’t know if this is supposed to be an actual central station in an actual city (probably not), but it says Amtrak on the train on the left, so it’s definitely supposed to be in the USA.

Central Station, Educa, 500 pieces. Completed on January 3, 2022.