Grumpy's Jigsaw Puzzle Review

  This puzzle was a gift some years ago, and has been in our pile taunting us ever since.   We started working on it on 14 August, after we finished the Cinque Terre 1500 piece puzzle.  Since we were able to do that one, we decided to tackle this one since it is divided into 2 bags of 1500 pieces.  We decided to work on each half separately because we're not quite up to the challenge of sorting through 3000 pieces (also we don't quite have the work space to make it easy to do). The pieces of this puzzle are very small and thin, and they do not fit together well.  It is generally not possible to move even sections of two pieces without them coming apart.  There were also a number of false fits, and many dark sections and sections that look the same.  I really wondered along the way if we were ever going to get it done.  We started with the castle, and then did the leaves at the top and most of the foreground at the bottom, and then filled in t...

  This was another Goodwill find a few weeks ago.  I really like this colorful image.  It was the first 1500 piece puzzle we have put together, and we enjoyed building it. There were a number of times I was convinced that a piece was missing, but it always turned up.  Early on I ran out of dark blue sky pieces and I still had two to put in right next to each other in the upper right.  I went through every piece again looking for them and was finally convinced they were  missing.  Then I discovered that I had put them in the wrong place a row below and to the left of where they belonged.  Those were the first of a number of false fits that slowed us up.  We had another at the very end when we had about 8 pieces left; one of the holes required a piece with two outs next to each other and we didn't have one.  So we looked more carefully and found our mistake. The quality of this puzzle was excellent.  The pieces were thick and they hol...

  Another fun puzzle by Charles Wysocki.  This was our 50th puzzle completed since we started on 30 April, our 26th from Buffalo Games and Puzzles, and our 12th by Charles Wysocki.  Two of the 26 have been missing pieces, both of which were purchased retail. I purchased this puzzle from Amazon a few weeks ago.  We enjoyed building this one; the wife did most of it.  It took us just under a day working on and off to finish it which is pretty good for us. There were a few false fits that slowed us up, but nothing unusual. This puzzle was a nice change after the Mega Puzzles one we just finished, which took 5 days.

  This is another Goodwill find from a few weeks ago.  It's called "Colorful Autumn Landscape" and it's part of the Vibrant collection from Mega Puzzles.  This is the first puzzle of this brand we have put together. It has been in my to-do pile but I was reluctant to start on it because all of the interior pieces have the same shape (two ins and two outs).  I didn't find this out until I opened the box.  I suspected it would be difficult.  I was right; it took us almost 5 days working on and off to finish this which makes it the most difficult puzzle we have finished so far.  It's a nice image, but it was a bear to put together. This was puzzle number 49 since April 2020.