Grumpy's Jigsaw Puzzle Review

  This is probably our last puzzle of this year, and is the 70th one we have completed since the first one at the end of April.  We have a combined total of 49,700 pieces assembled this year.  

  Another Goodwill find and another Cra-Z-Art Kodak puzzle.  This is a very nice image and was fun to put together.  

 Another White Mountain collage from Goodwill.  We enjoy doing these.  This is our 10th White Mountain puzzle.

  Another Goodwill find.  This one was fun and easy to put together.  The fit was good.  This was our eighth White Mountain puzzle.

  Another enjoyable White Mountain from Goodwill.  This one was more difficult than I anticipated; the wife did most of it.  The fit was very good for a White Mountain, as we were able to assemble sections and move them around without having them fall apart.  This is our 32nd Goodwill puzzle, of which 5 have had missing pieces.

  Another Buffalo Games and Puzzles by Charles Wysocki found at Goodwill.  This one had more false fits than usual.  I discovered that the right side was wrong when I could not connect it to the inside.  It took a bit of head scratching to figure it out.  This is our 31st puzzle from Goodwill our 31st from Buffalo Games and Puzzles, and our 14th Charles Wysocki. 

  This was another Goodwill find.  When we got it home we discovered that we already had this puzzle.  However, after comparing the two of them we discovered they are slightly different!  This version was copyrighted in 2015; the other is newer and was copyrighted 2018.  So, we are going to do the other one as well eventually.

  I think this puzzle was gifted to us, but am not sure.  We finished this last night; it took a while because we did not work on it as often as usual.

  This is another White Mountain Puzzle from Goodwill.  I have seen on line that many people don't like the quality of them, but for me they are fine.  We had a lot of fun with this one and it went together quickly.  We enjoy doing these collage puzzles for some reason.

  This was our first Big Ben puzzle and probably will be the last.  It's a nice image, but the quality is not very good.  We found this at Goodwill.  This was our first Goodwill puzzle with a missing piece in a while.  We took over a week to finish this because it was difficult to get into working on it as I did not enjoy the thin pieces.  The fit was poor also.

  Another fun one from Buffalo Games and Puzzles with artwork by Charles Wysocki.  This is the 13th Charles Wysocki puzzle we have done this year.  I enjoy doing these for some reason though they are simple and easy to do. This puzzle was also found at Goodwill (where we get most of our puzzles now).  This is the 27th Goodwill puzzle we have done this year; only 4 had missing pieces.

  This was another recent Goodwill find.  We enjoyed putting this one together.  I was amazed at how many different Tony the Tigers there were in this thing. This is our first puzzle from The Jigsaw Puzzle Factory.  Overall the quality was good, very similar to a White Mountain puzzle.  There is one piece with the paper torn off one of the tabs, but I found it and will repair it before it goes back in the box.

  This was a fun puzzle to put together.  My wife did most of the first half, and I might have done most of the second half.  She put all of the edge together but one piece that I had to look for. This is the first puzzle we have done with Kim Norlien as the artist, and I hope to do more.  We found this puzzle at Goodwill. 

  This is another Goodwill find.  It was easy and a lot of fun to put together.  We enjoy these larger White Mountain puzzes.

  This was another Goodwill find.  The hardest part was the blue water at the bottom; there were quite a few false fits that slowed us up for a bit.  The buildings were easier than I expected they would be.  All in all we enjoyed this one, but were glad when it was done.  It took longer than it should have because we slowed down and didn't spend as much time each day working on it.

  This was another Goodwill find.  My wife did most of the work on it.  I am still a little off my puzzle mojo after the Neuschwanstein Castle puzzle.  I did manage to do work on it towards the end and did a good bit of the green ceiling part.  I thought for a while there were going to be numerous missing pieces, but they all turned up except for the one.  Overall I think we enjoyed this one. Unfortunately there is a missing piece.  I could probably make one, but don't think I will bother.

  This was another Goodwill find, only $3.  It is named "Enchanted Frame" and is part of the Majestic Castles series from Buffalo Games and Puzzles. The wife did nearly all of this one; I did some of the Neuschwanstein in the center and a few other bits and pieces. This was fun, and turned out to be a little more difficult than we expected.  We enjoyed it.

 This was another Goodwill find.  We enjoyed this puzzle a lot.  It was a nice change after the 3000 piece Neuschwantsein Castorland puzzle that took us a month.  

  Finally got it done!  We were convinced a piece was missing, but it turned up.  I think it had been sitting on top of the puzzle and was overlooked. This puzzle has small, thin pieces and was not a lot of fun to put together.  The trees especially were difficult.   We did this in two halves, and it was still difficult.  The right side turned out to take longer, but I think we ran out of steam and there were a number of days we didn't work on it much.

  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...