Pixels Puzzles, 220 pieces. New cutter for me; nicely done cut with some color line cutting.
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| bird whimsies |
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| bird in situ with dropout legs |
I do wooden jigsaw puzzles and take pictures of them.
Friday, December 31, 2021
Five Carrots
Thom Spencer/Jigsaw Art, 186 pieces. What a great, unusual puzzle. The carrot parts are extra thick and rounded on the external edges, giving a "toy carrot" type feel as if it were play food. And it's double sided though a bit of inspection makes the color differences clear (easier on the carrot than on the carrot top). The top is very tricky with dropouts shaped like pieces--at least I hope I didn't miss any pieces! 8/10 Stave scale
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| grace pieces |
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| other side |
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Wreath
Fool's Gold, approx. 60 pieces? Very nice, somewhat tricky puzzle with lots of color line cutting that still basically interlocks, always appreciated. 4/5
Dragon's Land
Chad Valley, 100 pieces. I've wanted to do this puzzle for a long time and really appreciate the generous person who lent it! Super clever though the thematic selection of which images to include can be a bit hard to figure out (dunce cap?). 5/5
Falling for You, Susan Greenleaf
Stave, 90 pieces. Two-sword Teaser; the grace note of this one is that the holes for the whimsies are leaf-shaped but not shaped like the leaf whimsies, which fit in with dropouts. Charming! 7/10
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Friendship, Itzchak Tarkay
BCB, approx. 400 pieces. Lots of nice areas of color highlighting the pleasant rounded shapes of the pieces (no whimsies, as is standard for BCB)--the cutter was a bit worried about the print quality and while it could possibly have been sharper it didn't decrease the puzzling experience. I liked the image because Tarkay was involved in an old trademark/copyright case--not about puzzles--and so this reminded me. 4/5
Quebec City
Stave, 680 pieces. By coincidence, I rented another version of this from RAR earlier (Stave rental doesn't let you choose images, sigh). Still quite difficult at larger sizes with dropouts and lots of quasi-color line cutting (or is that color line cutting plus some interlocks?). 7/10
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| bike with dog in basket |
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| holding hands |
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| maple leaf |
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| also trefoil to avoid appearance of national favoritism over regional |
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| rebus: W+hat Hay V+ewe= what a view |
Tuesday, December 28, 2021
Barcelona, Linnea Pergola
Liberty, 673 pieces. Great addition to the Hoefnagel puzzle club. Colorful and busy Pergola image, steady assembly in sections. Too big for me to flip, but the usual whimsy type. 4/5
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| guitar whimsy placed with guitar |
Guitar
ZenChalet, 200 pieces. Amazon seller; similar style to all the irregular-edge animals, but ... not an animal? Otherwise much the same, with music themed whimsies. 3/5
Roch Urbaniak, Bosfor/Andre Derain, Les Voiles Rouges
Bosfor: Artifact, 214 pieces. Today in "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should"--interlocking border, pure geometric push-fit interior. Push-fit with lasers, why? I 100% understand why with hand-cut!
Derain, Artifact, 143 pieces: Nice, dreamy colors and scalloped pieces. Fish chasing fish at the bottom left are cute. 3/5
Friday, December 24, 2021
Big Bad Santa
Saratoga, 611 pieces. New hand cutter for me. My son was grumpy that I brought a Christmas puzzle into the house, but it looked like it would be a real challenge, and it absolutely was. The images created by the repeated words allowed for what was essentially color line cutting while still being fully interlocking, which was fantastic. However, in a number of places the cut was not straight horizontal, meaning that pieces had to be put together in a particular order or they wouldn't fit. It wasn't a huge deviation; often it could be done with pressure, but I don't feel very comfortable with that, so I would swap which one was going down onto the other. If not for that, I would be putting this puzzle on the Stave scale, but I just didn't feel good about doing so given the technical limitation. Still, I'm giving this a 5/5 for challenge and cleverness and will definitely buy more from Saratoga if I find them (this was an eBay purchase).
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| multipiece Santa |
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| Matryoshka Santa |
