As beautiful as this image is, I have to say this Mini Mindful was a bit disappointing for me. All of the other puzzles in this line that I’ve done have had tessellating pieces, or a repeating pattern of interestingly shaped pieces – this seemed just like a regular micro puzzle from Wentworth.
There’s not a thing wrong with Wentworth’s micro puzzles, but I was hoping for more of a challenge with the Mini Mindful; one that makes you really focus because it’s more difficult than a “regular” puzzle. This is just my opinion of course, but that’s what this blog is – my opinions about the puzzles I assemble.
Cute whimsies to go along with the outdoor image. They made the puzzle even easier to assemble, the shapes around them were very easy to find. 😢
Still, it’s a lovely image and I enjoyed putting it together even if I was a little let down by the piece shapes.
It isn’t very often at all that one comes across a brand new type of jigsaw puzzle that they’ve never seen before – this is one of those rare times. Have you seen a “Double-Sided Brainteaser” jigsaw puzzle before? This was my first time.
My Dad found two of these puzzles in Mom’s things about a year after she passed, and although I started playing with them soon after he brought them to me, they inevitably got put aside. They were lost in the shuffle of my crazy life for a bit, and recently I took them out again. I finished the first one in July of this year.
Here’s the concept…
The box tells you that it’s easy to play anywhere since there is no tabletop required for laying out pieces – it’s all supposed to be handheld as there is only one piece out of the frame at a time.
The way to solve it is knowing when you take a piece out exactly where it belongs. Which leads to the next piece, etc. That isn’t the way I usually do it, and I couldn’t seem to get my set-in-her-ways-old-lady-brain to cooperate.
If I know where the first piece I take out belongs, that leads to me having to know where the piece that it’s replacing goes. I tried, believe me; but it just isn’t the way puzzles go together for me and it wasn’t something my brain seemed to want to help me with. I found it unbelievably frustrating. I felt stupid because I’m good at puzzles, so why couldn’t I just solve them in a different way?
At only 48 pieces I thought it would be quick and easy to assemble correctly, but my brain doesn’t work in the fashion required to solve this brainteaser puzzle the way it’s meant to be solved. Perhaps it’s old age, or OCD, or just years of assembling jigsaw puzzles differently – whatever the reason, I found that the best (or only) way for me to put this puzzle together was to take all the pieces out of the frame first. As I’m always telling you, whatever way works best for you is what’s best, right? 😉
In addition, unlike every other double-sided puzzle I’ve completed, when one side is correctly assembled the other side is not; there is no “cheating” and only finishing one side and getting two complete images. That’s a first for me too.
This seems to be a collaboration between Andrews & Blaine and Pintoo. The pieces are extremely thick plastic, and the fit is incredibly tight. It takes some work to push the pieces out of the frame, but it would have to be quite snug if you wanted the pieces to stay put at all. The pieces are all ballerinas (2 prong/2 hole) and all exactly the same shape. It’s a well made puzzle.
It’s quite small, very easy to throw into a backpack or a purse and take with you…
It’s quite the interesting concept, and even with my frustration I enjoyed trying out it even though it wasn’t made for the way my brain works. It seems as though these are no longer being manufactured, and the only place I was able to find them online was on eBay. Perhaps the price had something to do with the decision to stop making these – the box says it was originally $14.95 for one 48 piece puzzle!
I have one more of these yet to assemble, but it will definitely go faster now that I’ve realized the best way for me to put it together. The images are both photographs, this time of sea life. Nothing overly exciting, but it’ll still be fun. 🧩💚
What do you think? Is this something you’d want to try if you found one of them out in the wild? Is your brain wired so that you could assemble a puzzle this way?
Excellent image, amazing piece shapes – just an all around wonderful puzzle that had me engaged and focused the entire time I was assembling it. The repetitive shaped pieces were a joy to work with and the colors in the water made for a stunning finished puzzle.
*Sorry about the cockeyed picture. I was on vacation! What do you want from me?!* 😉
This little one didn’t take long to assemble at all, but once I started working on it all I could think about was the next piece, what color fades into the next, and how this shape fits into that one. It was pure puzzle pleasure. 💟
My son has picked out the next puzzle for me to assemble (a 300 piece called Magical Journey), and I’m putting it off just a bit by having a nice, hot cup of coffee this morning and putting together this Mini Mindful puzzle first.
It shouldn’t take me too long, but it’s nice to work with a well made wooden puzzle, and the Mini Mindful puzzles require a bit of extra concentration so you can clear your mind of all the stresses of your day and just focus on the puzzle.
Discerning Dissectologists know that even a small puzzle can help you de-stress, calm your nerves, bring down your blood pressure, stave off memory loss, quiet anxiety, and even help put your brain into a meditative state similar to dreaming. Now why wouldn’t you want a bit of that every single day?
Burn It & Outback Footy by Sue Janson – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
I love both of these images, although I think the Outback Footy side might be a bit of a challenge in a larger piece count – there’s a lot of brown in that one. This is another of the acrylic puzzles from Mr. Bob that I was sent to try out, and I loved both of them!
I wanted to assemble and write up a post about this as soon as possible so I wouldn’t forget to tell y’all something that had completely slipped my mind. While cleaning out my old emails and reading through some of them I came across a request Mr. Bob had for me regarding these acrylic puzzles – he asked me to run them through the dishwasher! 🧼
The puzzle you see above has been through a cycle of my dishwasher, and it emerged completely unscathed! This was buried in my old lady brain, I didn’t remember it at all until I was going through my emails. Mr. Bob wanted to show that these puzzles would last a lifetime, and through whatever punishment a person could throw at it. He told me he’d put one of the puzzles through a cycle of his washing machine (for clothes) and it came through with flying colors.
When I asked him if there were any other tortures he wanted me to inflict on these little beauties – in the name of puzzle science, of course – he asked if we had a cement mixer available! 🤣
It’s too bad they don’t seem to be going forward with their acrylic line, I think they’d have been excellent puzzles. They certainly would last for more than a lifetime.
After assembling this puzzle I did suggest that if they were going to produce the acrylic puzzles that it may be better to only make shapes with the whimsy pieces and not cut the extra lines into them. You can see from the pictures above and below that the extra lines cut into them make it more difficult to see the image underneath – at least that’s how it was for these aging eyes.
It would have been better to turn these over to the “Burn It” side so you could see in the milkshake that it’s more difficult to read the words underneath. But you can still see that the extra lines distort the image. If you can’t tell from the image at the top of the page, the sign on the ice cream cart says “Burn It to Earn It” – you gotta chase it to taste it apparently. That way you can burn off some calories before you take in more. 🍦🏃♀️
I had a wonderful time trying out these puzzles – love that you get two for the price of one, and appreciate just how sturdy and long-lasting they truly are.
*And I’m a little sad that I didn’t get the chance to try one of the larger 500 piece acrylic puzzles that they were working on. Mr. Bob was going to send me one to review – that would have been an amazing puzzle to assemble!*
My Jigsaw Journal 