Beneath the Waves by Lauren Altes – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
Please forgive the wonky pictures in this one, I have no excuse other than possibly exhaustion from all the travel. This is the first of the puzzles from our recent visit to Michigan, so get ready for a week or so of beautiful (mostly) wooden puzzles assembled by me and the new additions to my puzzle posse
Still, isn’t this a bright and beautiful little puzzle? It was so nice to sit and talk while my sister-in-law made dinner and I put this colorful mini puzzle together. (I did offer to help with the cooking, but sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is stay out of someone’s way – that was the case on this particular evening.)
It didn’t take much concentration, the colors and the whimsy pieces helped to make this one pretty simple to put together – but it was still nice to work with even as easy as it was.
It seems these were just a generic set of whimsies, they didn’t really match the artwork at all. But that’s ok with me, it was still lots of fun.
The artist, Lauren Altes, also did the artwork for the puzzle that Mr. Bob Puzzles was commissioned to do for the National Breast Cancer Foundation of Australia in 2021- Look After Your. I loved her sense of humor, the colors, the composition; it made for a fantastic assembly and for such a good cause too.
I’ll have to check the rest of my Mr. Bob Puzzles here at the house and see if there are any more by this artist, I enjoy her work very much!
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!
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?
My Jigsaw Journal 