Serene Retreat by Bits and Pieces 1000 pieces

 

This puzzle is the 46th we have finished since we started puzzling this past April, and is titled "Serene Retreat" by Bits and Pieces (artist Cody Carlson). Currently this puzzle is out of stock.

We found this puzzle at Goodwill last week for about $3 which I thought was a steal.  We have finished 7 Bits and Pieces puzzles now (nearly all from Goodwill), but none with 1000 pieces from this brand before this one.  The puzzle is a good size at 27 x 20 inches.

There is no poster unfortunately, and the picture on the box is not really adequate to thoroughly search for a lot of pieces.  The picture is like an oil painting (my wife described it as being like a "paint by number" picture).  I found a picture on line, but the actual puzzle was darker than the online photo so the photo was not that useful.

The fit is very loose, and you cannot generally move segments of pieces without them falling apart.  I did not notice any false fits, but that is typical for a random cut puzzle.  The fit is so loose that it is sometimes difficult to tell if to pieces actually do fit together without looking at them from the back.

It was difficult to put the edges together, particularly the left edge, which had a lot of pieces with small edge length.  Because this was a Goodwill puzzle I was not confident that all the edge pieces would turn up, but they did eventually.  I was surprised that there were no missing pieces in the end, as I was pretty confident during the assembly that there would be some as certain pieces were really difficult to find.  I will bag the edges separately, which I don't usually do because I don't want to go through the exercise of finding them again.

Because the pieces are random cut, you don't know for sure what shape you are looking for, as the piece you are looking for may be actually be more than one piece which makes plugging a hole problematic sometimes.  I spent a lot of time on one hole in particular trying all the obvious single pieces and then all combinations of small pieces which might have a chance.  After I gave up I found that piece on the floor.

I also thought the perspective on the image was a bit silly, and the picture has nonsensical elements (like the front walk which goes nowhere), which was a little distracting.  The relative sizes of things is strange (e.g. the dog by the porch is very big; if you moved the dog to the foreground by the moose it would be really large.  Try to picture the front porch dog in the back of the truck.).  But it is a colorful image and I like it for what it is.  

This puzzle may be the most difficult we have done so far, due to the random cut and the loose fit.  We found assembling this puzzle frustrating at times but overall we liked it in the end and will probably keep it.