Winter City by Karla Gerard – PuzzleTwist – 500 pieces

Like a Wasgij or What If? puzzle, the puzzle inside the box doesn’t match the image you see on the outside – so I do not show any spoilers. Sorry, you don’t get to see the finished puzzle. In this puzzle there are 32 differences between the box image and the puzzle, sometimes small things and sometimes very big things.

I don’t find these too difficult, it’s just like assembling a puzzle when you put the box away and don’t use it for help. They’re still great fun though.

PuzzleTwist has a bunch of different categories of puzzles; in this one, Something’s Amiss, things are different on the actual puzzle than what you see on the box image. The first puzzle of theirs I did was called Reveal the Color; the image on the box was black and white, and the puzzle was not only in color, but the color revealed a hidden image as well. Very cool!

I had a good time with this one, my only problem was the amount of puzzle dust. I received this puzzle secondhand from my pal Penny, so it had already been sorted and assembled once. There was still quite a bit of dust. Otherwise it was an excellent puzzle that was hard to walk away from. The fit was very good, the image reproduction was beautiful and there was wonderful variety in piece shape.

PuzzleTwist has created a character called “Maynard”, he’s hidden in many puzzles. He’s very small, about the size of the knob end of a puzzle piece, and he’s not always easy to locate. If you can’t find him though, there are hints on the PuzzleTwist website for each puzzle; and if you still can’t find him, there is a picture revealing where he’s hidden. This is Maynard….

He’s very cute, don’t you think? While looking up this puzzle on the PuzzleTwist website I read about Maynard, and there was a link to the page where you could find hints to help you find him. I’d never heard about this before, and so I went to the hint page. I only read the first hint and found him in my puzzle pretty quickly. To be honest, it makes me want to get some more of their puzzles just to find if he’s hidden in them!

I think Maynard is adorable, and love that he’s hidden in their puzzles. I couldn’t find much info about him on their site, only hints for where he’s hiding in certain puzzles. I wish there was a page with a little information about how it began and which kinds of puzzles he’s hiding in, etc. I’d like to know more!

Wanna hear a weird coincidence? My nickname among friends in high school was Maynard. There was a commercial back in the 80s for Malt-o-Meal (hot breakfast cereal similar to Cream of Wheat) and the tagline was “Good stuff Maynard!” which I was constantly quoting because I found it funny. My friends started calling me that, it was our little inside joke. When the whole senior class got personalized shirts – the name on the back of mine was Maynard. 😎