Sugar Overload – Cobble Hill – 1000 pieces

What better puzzle for this month? October is the month with the absolute best candy holiday ever – Halloween! If you think it looks pretty easy, I was right there with you until the sorting started; but once I saw the pieces I knew it would be quite a difficult assembly. And it was, but I’m pretty darn proud of myself for completing it.

The quality of this puzzle was amazing, and really I enjoyed working with it. The cut is actually a modified ribbon cut (Cobble Hill calls it random/quirky), with quite a few interestingly shaped pieces that made it extremely entertaining to assemble. The fit was excellent; entire sections could be picked up easily to move them around. The finish is matte which helps with the glare caused by artificial overhead lighting. There was quite a bit of puzzle dust, but that seems to be an increasing problem with every company lately. I don’t hold it against them, because it doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the assembly for me.

The caramels were the first thing I assembled, it was easy to find the pieces because they had the shiny wrapping on them. I used to love eating these but I haven’t had one for a very long time. I have specific memories of my sisters and I sitting around the table unwrapping entire bags of these so that mom could melt them to make caramel apples in the fall – how we loved eating them! There was a huge apple orchard in our hometown, and we’d all go to pick apples in the fall. Some of them turned into homemade apple pies, some became canned filling for pies and crumbles to enjoy in the middle of winter, and the best ones ended up as caramel apples that were made with love by our momma – and they were so unbelievably good. 🍎💖

This was another section that was easy (somewhat) to find and assemble. When hubby came into the puzzle room to kiss me goodnight he pointed to this section and in particular the candies with the sugary beads on them and said “those are sooooo good!”. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the flat square-shaped candies anywhere before. Have you? What do they taste like?

The jelly candies at the bottom and top of this picture were easy to sort, but not as easy to assemble. With all the shine on many of the candies it was difficult to know what piece was next. The shine looks white, but it could be shiny where the pieces connect and your brain tricks you into thinking you need a certain color, but actually you don’t. It made for a somewhat difficult assembly, but I enjoyed the challenge of it.

Once I had put together each bowl of candy that was relatively easy to find, I resorted to sorting by color and putting things together that way. When I got to the end, the only pieces left were red, yellow, and the white of the bowls; those pieces were then sorted by shape to finish it up. It wasn’t to difficult to finish it, but getting there certainly was more of a challenge than I bargained for.

An enjoyable, but definitely difficult puzzle. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, beware. It isn’t as easy as it looks!