Ecru Mystery Puzzle #17

 Ecru/Artifact, Valentine Rukenenko, Fairytale Cottage, 280 pieces. Charming fairytale image, as promised, with fairytale whimsies. 3/5

Butterfly Dreams

 Wooden City, 600 pieces. Another pleasant, steady-assembling puzzle from Wooden City, some improvement on the lighter areas not showing much in the way of char. Now willing to call this an excellent source of good-value puzzles with a high whimsy-to-regular-piece ratio. 3/5

a rare multipiece-ish whimsy

good color here

Every Which Way But Loose, #4737

 Chris Yates/The Baffler, approx 150 pieces. Very difficult--I even used the tray for structure, which I often don't do. Each piece was painted separately, which is impressive especially given the tightness of the fit--that must have taken some doing. I like having to rely only on shape! 7/10 Stave scale

the tray

Ton Dubbeldam, Provence Revisited

 Artifact, 293 pieces. Nice difficulty here as the image slowly transitions, plus a swirly cut. 3/5

United Nations, New York

 Liberty, 239 pieces. Small Liberty produced for the UN Foundation; nice style. 3/5

Tour of Jordan

 JC Puzzles, 250 pieces. Simple, Wentworth-style puzzle with two broken pieces. Cute box closure shown in final picture (used as a lock for a protruding piece on top). 3/5

The Tower of Topple, Matthew Ellwood

 Perdu, 425 pieces. Acrylic puzzle with only a few difficult-to-fit bits; very laser-cut wooden aesthetic with areas of similar cuts (swirls, jagged, classic strip cut), a seriously irregular edge, and a bunch of color line cutting. Lots of little easter eggs in the image.  The sky makes the picture look dirty, unfortunately, but the acrylic itself is in fine condition. 3/5

some of the color line cutting on dome tops

jagged little cut

Sunday Drive

 Stave, 460 pieces. A very pleasant Stave from the 90s. Rebus not very difficult (even for me): Sunday Golf. 6/10

a fair number of single color whimsies given the image

water skiing

rebus: Sun+ Golfing

Tim Zeltner, Journey East

 Boardwalk, 330 pieces. Long and narrow, this puzzle changes enough to make it relatively easy, with only a few areas where it's not clear what goes where. A couple of nicely coordinated-with-the-image whimsies. 3/5

M.C. Escher, Three Worlds

 Optimago (?), 510 pieces. I attribute these Escher puzzles to Optimago because the cutting style is so like Optimago-branded puzzles, but they aren't explicitly marked that way, and I have no idea how to find out how many different Escher puzzles were made. I buy as many as I find! 3/5 high difficulty given the subtle change from one part of the image to another.

Mediterranean Illusion

 Elm, 445 pieces. A lot of repeated images with differing sizes and colors made this a lot of fun to do. 7/10 Stave scale.

you can see a number of internal fake edges here

Card Sharks/Card Game at the Beach, Alex Ross

 Par/Stumpcraft, 540 pieces. Collaboration! This was a good idea, because Stumpcraft's technical expertise melds well with the Par piece design, with a tight fit and classic Par whimsies. I particularly liked the large multipiece crabs corresponding to the two central figures of the image, though I did wonder ... shouldn't they have been sharks?  4/5

Dreaming of Chagall, Elena Kotliarker

 Nautilus, 534 pieces. Judaica in wood puzzles is rare and this one is a lovely image, with lots of peacock whimsies and a menorah and Star of David. 4/5

peacock

another peacock

and another

yep