Golden Gate Salute, William Hockins

Maridale, 350 pieces. I find the Maridale puzzles quite charming--they're crudely cut by the standards of higher-end makers, but they have the feel of naive art.  3/5

Great Art of Light and Shadow, Andrei Gorenkov

DaVici, 160 pieces.  Another new laser cutter for me!  This one is active, in Russia, with some puzzles listed on Etsy.  A bit pricier given the shipping than Wentworth/Artifact, but I liked the variety.  The whimsies were similar to Liberty's, with about equal thickness to the pieces and lots of animal whimsies.  Nice picture.  I'm adding images of the box because the packaging was great too, very colorful--with an extra piece in a velvet pouch that might be their signature piece. 3/5

Hunter's Dilemma

MN Flash, 151 pieces. Etsy seller.  Interesting variant on hand-cut puzzles--it's all one color, meaning it's piece shapes doing all the work.  I can tolerate some push-fit construction when other interesting things are going on; there's also a tray for the bold who are sure where it will all fit in.  3/5

Shoshone Falls, Idaho, Thomas Moran, 1873

GoAnywhere, 170 pieces. New cutter to me, though seems to be out of business, sadly.  The puzzle arrived in a repurposed VCR case (previously unused, but clearly manufactured as a VCR case)--I guess there had to be lots of people stuck with those when the VCR stopped being a common playback device.  Whimsies are a bit like Wentworth's, with some extra inscribed detail visible on the back side.  This is laser cutting that uses the affordances of laser cutting in an interesting way: there's a mini puzzle inside the puzzle, and you get the outline and the number of pieces and have to figure it out without any help from the picture. The pieces also fit in the regular way with the picture, so sometimes I found a connection but had to reject it because the picture matched!  Very interesting and a nice variation.  3/5

whimsies

puzzle in puzzle

Movement 1, Wassily Kandinsky

Nautilus, 279 pieces. In some ways the most conventional Nautilus I've done yet, with pretty standard piece shapes though a clever/challenging irregular edge that was my favorite part.  Fine, but I think I liked the earlier ones better.  3/5

Rustic Black Eyed Susan, Kevin Quillen

284 pieces, Kitchen Woods.  New hand-cutter for me, via Etsy.  Nice quality--one tiny knob issue (it was a tiny knob and it wanted to snap) but otherwise solid, with good difficulty and a tiny bit of color line cutting, including around the centers of the flowers, without sacrificing interlocking connections--particularly cleverly done around the petals.  Good value for a hand-cut puzzle.  4/5

Full of Love & Vibrant Love

Nook, 70 pieces: Cute and small; might make a nice host/ess gift.

Vibrant Love, Nook, 354 pieces: I decided to see if I liked the Nook puzzles better with slightly smaller pieces (the ones I got before were oversized).  As it turns out, they still aren't working as well for me as other cutters, and some of the fiddly pieces were easily broken--I'm looking at you, left petal of the rose whimsy repeated 4 times in this puzzle.  Not bad, but clearly not where I'm getting my best puzzling. 

The Mane Event

Stave, 170 pieces. This is a five-sword teaser, and it is everything I wanted.  The best Staves have an amazing inevitability about their difficulty--you can't possibly see how it can fit together, and then when you have put a few pieces together you can't possibly see how it could be any different.  Retained its difficulty to the very end.  The symmetry is probably the biggest clue--fitting two pieces together generally indicates two other pieces should fit.  10/10 go Stave.

Alex Beard, Emerald Isle Peacock

Liberty, 496 pieces.  I really like the Beard Liberty puzzles. This one has a complex multipiece peacock, unsurprisingly, as well as a picnicking couple instead of the Parisian couple at an outdoor table that's more common.  4/5