Defence Against the Dark Arts – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 500 pieces

Is this not a fantastic image for the month of October? I think it is, so here we are. Honestly I wasn’t sure how this one was going to go for me, as there is a LOT of black in it even though it seems very colorful and I wasn’t sure how these aging eyes of mine would deal with all the darkness. Luckily with the help of some eyeglasses and an excellent light source it wasn’t too bad at all. 👓🕯

I cannot be held responsible for this puzzle purchase as every Harry Potter puzzle on the Wentworth website was 70% off back in June, and I was left unsupervised with access to my bank account. Consequently, of the fourteen puzzles that were available nine of them made it into my shopping cart. Getting a QUALITY 500 piece wooden puzzle for such a great price was just too good to pass up, so I didn’t! I bought many different sizes: two 500 pieces, a 450, a 225, a set of four 65 pieces, and several 250’s (which I consider to be the perfect size for a Wentworth). This is the second puzzle from this purchase that I’ve assembled, and it was an absolute joy.

If you read My Jigsaw Journal regularly you might remember this picture from the in progress post I did back in August when this puzzle was assembled. The whimsies in this puzzle are absolutely fabulous – with images of Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape, and even Crookshanks, Scabbers, and Hedwig,. I love all of these figures, and truly appreciate all the work that must have gone into them.

I’m not sure what it is that I love so much about this little section, I just know that it makes me happy even just to look at it. It was a lot of fun to put together and still makes me smile even as I’m typing this up. 😍

Normally I show the entire back of a wooden puzzle, especially when the shapes are Victorian cut or just interesting to me. The shapes for most of these pieces were “normal” and so even though I took a picture of the back I decided to only show you this little part of it. You couldn’t tell unless you were really paying attention, but Scabbers’ whiskers extend into two of the pieces next to him. I didn’t notice at all until I flipped it over. There are a few of these extensions into surrounding pieces for a couple of the other whimsies as well. It makes me really appreciate all the work that went into these puzzles, even more than I already did!

For some reason I just dumped out all the pieces onto my board and flipped them over with no sorting, not even the edges. It was chaos! As the assembly went on I realized that 500 pieces is a bit too many for me to puzzle that way. It’s ok with a smaller piece count, but for this stuck-in-her-ways old lady, I think anything over 300 pieces will need to be sorted from now on. Lesson learned.

Chaos not withstanding, this puzzle made me tremendously happy. Buying it made me happy. Looking at the box made me happy. Finding all the whimsy pieces made me happy. And assembling it made me very happy. 😄