My sweet baby girl gave me this puzzle for Valentine’s Day; she is so generous and kind, and I’m so proud of who she is – I raised a great lady! 💗 Besides all that, she has great taste in puzzle images, how cute is this?!
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a new Artifact wooden puzzle, or any new wooden puzzle for that matter. It’s so much fun to look through the all the pieces and find the whimsies, and to see all the interesting shapes. The whimsy pieces in this puzzle are all parts of the image…
They are all easy to find except for the interesting shapes at the top of the picture; they are shapes that are shown on the spines of two of the books, it took me a few minutes to figure out what they were. The 3 piece dragon whimsy is so cute, he’s obviously my favorite. 🐲
The geometric shaped pieces made for an interesting assembly, but once you figure out how everything fits together it’s great fun!
I love to see the wooden puzzles from the back, it’s always interesting to look at the shapes and how everything fits together. The cut of this puzzle is something I’ve never seen before; it’s a little simple, but was very entertaining to assemble and placing every piece was a joy.
The artwork by Randal Spangler is so whimsical and adorable, I absolutely love it! I’ve been looking around for more puzzles with his work; it looks as though Artifact and Vermont Christmas Company are the only brands who have Randal Spangler images. I’m thinking I may have to get me some more puzzles with his artwork!
Thank you again to The Baby Princess for this beautiful puzzle! 😘
My husband surprised me with this puzzle; and not only was I surprised that he bought it for me, I was surprised that he picked such a great image too. It turned out to be a fantastic, well-made, very challenging puzzle and I absolutely loved it. Well done hubby!
The image is of the Prague clock, which I knew nothing about when I received this puzzle, but it lead me to do some research on it and I was fascinated. It was built in 1410, and is the oldest working astronomical clock in the world! The clock face gives you all sorts of information; if you know how to read it you can tell the date, how long until sunrise or sunset, the location of the Sun on the ecliptic (which tells you the date in relation to the sign of the zodiac), what lunar phase the moon is currently in, and, oh yes, it tells time too (both current standard time and Ancient Bohemian Time). It makes for a great puzzle image too!
Nautilus puzzles is a newer wooden puzzle company, started in 2018. I was highly impressed by the quality of the puzzles, but even more so by the cut of the pieces. The cut is exceptional; it is designed so that every single piece touches at least one of the whimsy pieces – which makes for wonderfully varied shapes and a much more challenging assembly. Their catalog is large and varied as well, and along with some images you see quite often in puzzles they’ve got some very unique images as well. They weren’t in business when I started my wooden jigsaw puzzle experimentthree years ago, because I definitely would have given these a try. Their smallest puzzles start at around $15, which is quite affordable in my book.
If you’re into astrology, you’ll recognize many of the whimsy shapes. I recognized the zodiac symbols, but not all the rest of them.
This is quite a large number of whimsies for only a 500 piece puzzle, and they all match the “theme” of the image. It was fun to sort through the pieces and find all the interesting whimsies, it’s one of my favorite parts of working with wooden puzzles. 🙂
All the whimsies were themed towards time, astrology, astronomy, etc. In this corner you can see the phases of the moon! That’s going an extra step, instead of just throwing whimsies around in between pieces they’ve put some thought into the design. It made for quite an entertaining assembly, and I will definitely be buying another puzzle from this company.
Hubby did an awesome job picking out this puzzle, it was a joy to assemble and I absolutely loved it! It was exceptionally well made, expertly designed, and was great fun to put together – it is very highly recommended!
*Also, as usual, I recommend giving wooden puzzles a try if you haven’t before. There are many affordable companies out there, like Nautilus, and we puzzlers are definitely worth a splurge now and then. If you can’t bring yourself to buy one, how about requesting one for a birthday or Christmas present? You’re so worth it!
Details:
Title: Prague Clock
Artist: Unknown
Brand: Nautilus Puzzles
Piece count: 500 pieces
Size: Approx. 19 x 14 in. (48 x 36 cm)
Purchased: New
Quality:
Board: Excellent, 4mm thick wood
Cutting: Excellent
Image: Excellent
Box: Very good, pieces come in a cloth bag
Fit: Excellent
Puzzle Dust: None
Piece cut: Random cut with whimsies
Piece shapes: Excellent variety
Finish: Slightly shiny finish
Overall Rating: Excellent, most highly recommended
Art City by Robert Williams – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 1001 pieces
I love unique and interesting images, and there’s nothing like this one anywhere but at Mr. Bob Puzzles. The colors, the movement of the artwork, it’s just astounding and I absolutely adored this puzzle and the assembly!
The first thing I do when I get a wooden puzzle is to look through all the pieces to see the shapes, hopefully whimsies, and get a feel for the colors and the image. This one definitely didn’t disappoint. Not only where there plenty of whimsical shapes, there were a lot of words too – so fun!
I didn’t even notice when I was going through them that “ciao” is spelled wrong, in fact if I hadn’t received an email from the company I probably never would have realized it! They were horrified at the mistake and have offered to fix it immediately. Honestly I don’t think I’ll bother, it makes it more interesting I think. 😉
The whimsy pieces have a roaring 20’s feel, jazzy and fun and they made for fun surrounding pieces too.
The image made for a difficult assembly, but it was the lovely kind of difficult that keeps you engaged and engrossed.
This woman taking a picture with her iPhone is the artist’s way of bringing the image into the present as many of the whimsy pieces suggest older times. (Or so Mr. Bob tells me 🙂 )
This assembly was absolutely the right amount of challenging, but not too difficult as to make it frustrating. The cut of the pieces seems mostly regular, but it is quite deceptive and not at all as easy as it looks. If it were too easy it wouldn’t be much fun at all, so thankfully these puzzles have struck an excellent balance.
Even with the shipping from Australia, I’ve found Mr. Bob Puzzles to be relatively reasonably priced; with the exchange rate for the Australian dollar shoppers in the US start out with a bit of a discount already. And with the wildfires in Australia I also like the idea of sending some of my puzzle money down there.
The North Pole by Medana Gabbard – Wentworth – 40 pieces
I love the look of this image, it reminds me of an Americana puzzle. It’s very different than the typical Christmas puzzle images that you normally see, and that’s what I love about it. If you look at the middle of the puzzle you’ll see that there’s a nativity scene – that’s something new, especially with this being the North Pole and Santa flying away to do his Christmas Eve work.
The detail makes all the difference, I love the way they’ve cut that Santa whimsy! Wentworth whimsies make me happy, and one of the best parts of their puzzles is opening it up and searching through the pieces to see what shapes they’ve chosen and looking at the detail – at least it is for me.
I don’t get out much, and I have PADS, so my emotions are definitely linked to puzzles. 😉
The Puzzle that Broke the Ice – Wentworth – 40 pieces
I did it! I think. Okay, I’m 97.5 percent sure that I did it! You can see why this puzzle reminded me of Winter Aspen – so much snow and trees. *shudder* It truly was the most challenging Wentworth puzzle that I’ve ever assembled, and it was only 40 pieces! Can you imagine getting any of the larger versions? This also comes in 252 and 510 pieces. I’m not sure if more pieces would make it easier or more difficult, but I definitely won’t be finding out.
I started by turning all the pieces upside down to sort them by shapes, it’s easier if you don’t see the image and just look at the specific shape.
After the sorting the real work begins. Obviously. A close look at the image on the box showed the irregular edge, and that there would be the top of stars and tree trunks along the edge. I started with the darkest and thickest trunk in the image on the far left. From there it was trial and error and a LOT of squinting to be certain each piece I added matched up with all the tree trunks and branches.
It was difficult as there was snow obscuring some parts of certain trees, but as I said I’m 97.5 percent sure I put this one together properly. 😎
One more holiday puzzle down! I’m pretty proud of myself for finishing this one and not putting it off any longer, I was truly dreading it (because I had tried before to assemble it and failed – my brain is being cooked from the inside by hot flashes and isn’t as sharp as it used to be). But as difficult as it was, it was still pretty awesome, completely absorbing, and looks very festive!
Wentworth has some extremely difficult holiday images like this one with repetitive shaped pieces and they all have fabulous names like The Puzzle that Burnt the Turkey, and The Puzzle that Ruined Christmas. The silly names make me laugh, but these little puzzles are no joke! They’re the typical excellent quality that the “regular” puzzles are, and even if they take me a little bit more brain power I really do enjoy the added challenge. I’m giving this one a difficulty rating of four out of five ice cubes. 😉
My Jigsaw Journal 