Prairie Wind Flowers by Charles Wysocki – Buffalo – 300 pieces
I was pleasantly surprised by this puzzle, it was a thrift store buy from mom’s house, and the box indicated that there was a missing piece. Normally that annoys me, but I decided to assemble it anyway – and there were no missing pieces. Awesome!
It went together very quickly, and the wonderfully thick pieces were a joy. The fit was exceptional and all in all it was a lovely puzzle. I’m not sure how much I would have enjoyed it as a 1000 piece puzzle, but I’ve learned that you never can tell about those things; at least I can’t.
This was my favorite part, I love the dog sitting in the basket waiting for a ride. Hey guys, doesn’t anybody want to take me anywhere? I promise I’ll be good!
I started sorting my next puzzle, a 2000 piece Big Ben right after I completed this, and the pieces were tiny in comparison – both in size and thickness. Perhaps it wouldn’t seem so bad if I hadn’t just finished this one. 😉
The Periodic Table of the Elements – Eurographics – 1000 pieces
I wish I had the right words to express how much I absolutely adored assembling this puzzle – it was so entertaining! It’s an older Eurographics puzzle, so it’s a random cut and it was absolutely the best puzzle I’ve assembled in a while!
Most of the newer Eurographics puzzles I’ve come across are not only grid cut, they only have the one piece shape. Ugh. Boring, boring, boring! This randomly cut puzzle was tricky in some places, but for the most part it was pretty easy – but not boring in the least. Can you tell I loved it?
I never took chemistry, so honestly this is the very first time I had a good look at the Periodic Table, and some of the element’s names were a surprise to me; Americum, Californium, Einsteinium, Europium, Neptunium…
I was very interested in reading the names of all the elements, and it made me curious as to how or why things were named what they were. There was also a table at the bottom showing all the elements, the year they were discovered, and who discovered them. I found it so interesting!
This puzzle was full of things I didn’t know. I’d never heard of Dimitri Mendeleev and had no idea he was the “inventor” of the periodic table. There’s an element named after him too – Mendelevium. I’m sure this isn’t new to many people, but it is to me; I found this entire puzzle not only entertaining, but fascinating as well.
This was one of the puzzles I found in the trunk of mom’s car, and it makes me think of her – she would have loved putting this one together. She knew the kind of puzzles I enjoy, and I’m certain she got this from the thrift store with me in mind. I wish she were here so that I could show her the finished image, tell her thank you, and tell her how much I miss puzzling with her. 💖
This is the first puzzle from this box with a missing piece. I was pretty surprised; everything seemed to be well taken care of, and each puzzle is in it’s own small bag. It’s a little disappointing, but there are still a good amount of interesting puzzles in the box that are complete, and I’ve been enjoying putting them together.
Each puzzle has an educational side, where things are named or explained – those are my favorites. The cute pictures are fine too, but I’ve had a great time learning things I didn’t know before, or re-learning things I’ve forgotten.
The explanations of the parts of a pirate ship reminded me of threats I’ve heard on tv shows or movies. “Hang him from the yardarm”, and being “keelhauled”. You can see where the keel is at the bottom of the ship; I think being dragged under the ship attached to the keel is a particularly horrible form of punishment that I would absolutely want to avoid! And being hung by the yardarm was a method of execution that was quite unpleasant as well – not for me, thanks!
This cute image of cartoony pirates doesn’t really go with my previous paragraph, does it? These are kids puzzles after all. Unfortunately this one won’t be sent with the others to the school where my daughter works, in true pirate fashion it’s lost a leg – and I have no wooden ones to replace it! 😉
This image is so different and interesting; mom and I both loved it as soon as we saw it. I opened the box several times when I was looking for my next puzzle, but always put it back because it looked so difficult and it wasn’t the right time (also I wanted to work on it with mom and she wasn’t always able to come play puzzle with me).
It had great quality, thick pieces, and a nice fit too. The only minus was that there was only one piece shape, it seems that there are quite a few puzzles out there with just the one shape, and personally I would love it if they branched out a bit and added more interesting, or even just “other” shapes.
The box for this one said Fitting Reminder, but there was also a notation that it was from American Greetings Corporation. There was no date on the box, but it looks quite old. I’m guessing it’s most likely from the 80’s. It was a very cool puzzle!
There were so many darkish muddled looking pieces that it was a bit difficult. But once I got going I enjoyed the challenge and it was hard for me to get up and walk away from it. It’s so very different than most puzzle images, and I got sucked into “just one more piece” over and over again.
This puzzle very much makes me think of mom, and I ended up taping the back of it so that I could keep it. It makes me extremely sad that we didn’t have a chance to work on it together, we would have had a great time; and there would have been a quite a bit of little old lady cussing too, I’m sure. 👵
There are so many puzzles here that mom found for us and that we were both looking forward to assembling together. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been wanting new puzzles lately, the older ones all have memories attached – and all those memories are primarily of my mom. I guess I’m trying to hold on to those as long as I can.
Coral Reef by Lambert and Samborski – Great American Puzzle Factory – 294 pieces
This is a VERY interesting puzzle that I found in the trunk of my mom’s car. She bought it at the thrift store, but didn’t have a chance to show it to me before she went into the hospital. It was extremely entertaining, and she would have loved working on it with me; I would have loved working on it with her too.
It’s called The Moving Puzzle, and is made by the Great American Puzzle Factory. On the box it says “The never-ending, always moving jigsaw puzzle!!” On the back of the box it tells you that there are two ways to approach this tricky image. You can assemble the picture so that it matches the image on the box top, then change your picture by moving the pieces from top to bottom, left to right and so on. Or, you can pick any piece and build your puzzle from it, all the pieces will fit together and the image will grow in all directions, it doesn’t have to be a rectangular puzzle.
I assembled it the first way to begin with. The picture above is the puzzle assembled as it is on the box top; then I started moving things around…
Then I moved many things around and changed the puzzle to be rectangular again, I’m showing it next to the original way it was assembled so that it’s easier to see the differences…
Coral Reef by Lambert and Samborski – Great American Puzzle Factory – 294 pieces
It’s a pretty cool concept, and it was fun to move things around and make the image change. I will say though that everything doesn’t always line up exactly right. If you assemble it to look like the box top the image is fine. When you see where things can move and start changing the puzzle the image doesn’t always line up perfectly. (Just an observation from a puzzle nerd who looks closely at those things 🤓)
At only 294 pieces, it would be great for kids too. This one will end up at the school my daughter works for, and I hope those children enjoy it as much as I did.
It’s a great quality puzzle; the pieces are extremely thick and the colors are lovely with very nice image reproduction. There is only one piece shape, and I cant really comment on the fit because they really only snug up next to each other, they don’t interlock. It wasn’t much of a problem for me because my puzzle board is covered with fabric, but if you work on a slippery surface it would most likely be quite frustrating.
Mom always found the most interesting puzzles when she went thrift store shopping. If you find a Moving Puzzle, give it a try – it’s a different puzzle experience, that’s for sure.
My Jigsaw Journal 