American Diner - Steve Crisp by White Mountain 1000 Pieces (smaller format)

 

This puzzle is called "American Diner" and is made by White Mountain.  We picked it up last week at Goodwill.  I did not know that White Mountain made smaller format puzzles until I started working on this one.  The previous White Mountain 1000 piece puzzle we did was 30" x 24", and I thought this one was the same size until I started putting the edge together and discovered it is only 27" x 20".  Actually, it is smaller than that as the finished puzzle is only 19 3/8" on the short side and a bit under 27" on the long side.  If I had been paying more attention I would have realized from the size of the box that something was different.  The product code for this one is 1397T (the standard format is 1397 and appears to be available on the White Mountain website currently).  Next time I will pay more attention as I prefer the bigger size.

The artist for this puzzle is Steve Crisp, who was the artist on the White Mountain "Old Candy Store" we did last week.

This puzzle has been around the block a few times, as the fit was pretty loose for a White Mountain puzzle.  Those I have done previously fit pretty tight.  This one was a looser, but I was still able to sometimes move sections of pieces but not always.  I also managed to pick the puzzle up in one piece at the end holding the sides, which surprised me because I didn't think it would work.  

Because the fit is looser I had more of a problem with false fits and had to undo a piece here and there.  The fit was probably loose because this puzzle has obviously been done a few times and the box was pretty beat up.  Some of the pieces are starting to get fuzz on the bottoms, so I know it has been assembled a number of times.

Another difference was this is the first White Mountain I have done that didn't show signs of a few pieces starting to delaminate.  This puzzle had none of that.

This puzzle was fun to do, with sections that we could attack after sorting by color and also pieces that we had to hunt for using the picture on the box since there is no poster, which is typical for White Mountain.  The picture on the box is very small and barely adequate for the job.  At least Goodwill didn't put the price sticker on top of the picture this time.

The image quality was very good, though not as colorful as it is in the photo on the box.

This was puzzle number 47 since we started on 30 April of this year and was our 17th Goodwill puzzle and our third White Mountain puzzle.  There were no missing pieces, and the previous owner had sorted the edge pieces into a separate bag which was nice.

I am going to keep an eye open for the standard size version of this as I like it quite a bit.  I'm not decided on whether we will keep this one or donate it back, but am leaning toward donating it.