No, the “smoky” look isn’t the picture, it’s the actual puzzle. It had very odd coloring in my opinion, but I’ve seen a lot of odd things in puzzles in my time. 😉
This puzzle wasn’t as entertaining as I’d hoped, but they can’t all be fantastic. The quality was fair; the pieces were thick enough and fit together extremely well. But the image reproduction was fuzzy and smoky and altogether weird. I’ve never really come across a puzzle like this from any brand. Interesting.
The artwork made for quite a challenge, everything was so muted and smushed together.
There were a lot of blue pieces, but luckily there were plenty of things to break up the monotony. The grid cut was offset, so you couldn’t rely on piece size to see if they lined up, which made the ocean sections a bit more challenging.
I’ve never worked a puzzle with this odd coloration before, it was….something.
My Jigsaw Journal 
It kind of looks like the pieces were left in the sun and faded over time before being returned to the box. Very frustrating I am sure.
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I know it looks like that, but it really didn’t seem that way in person. I suppose it could be faded, but it looked different than faded colors although I can’t find words to describe why.
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Was this new puzzle? If not, I think pennyweiss1974 is right, it was probably completed and left in the sun.
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It’s from a thrift store, so definitely not new.
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When looking at this puzzle I wanted to take off my glasses to clean them…..lol
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That’s how I felt when I was working on it! LOL
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Were the colours different on the box?
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I have absolutely no recollection to be honest. I think they were similar – kind of muted and smoky looking. I don’t have the box anymore to check unfortunately.
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Sounds like it was on purpose then, very strange…
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Absolutely, very strange indeed.
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