Double-sided Impossipuzzle 550 pieces - Baked beans and sprouts - Solving tips

Earlier this year I shared some solving tips for one of the puzzles that I had worked on in the Impossipuzzle series - Impossipuzzle Golf Balls and Tees. The other week I came across another in the series which I also had fun completing, and so I thought I'd share it here. 

This puzzle is called Impossipuzzle - Beans and Sprouts and it's another double-sided puzzle depicting baked beans on one side and Brussels sprouts on the other.

 

This 550 piece puzzle was made by Funtime Gifts. The box on my charity shop copy is a little faded as it must be fairly old, I think this range was released in the mid 2000s. There are a few others in the series, with one in particular that I'm still on the hunt for featuring sweets and candies. They are readily available on eBay, so if I don't find it on my charity shop trawls in the near future I will look there!

I think that the difficulty level on the different sides in this jigsaw is more similar than in the Golf Balls and Tees puzzle. However I think that the baked beans side is probably the most difficult side, and this is the one that I decided to do first!

I knew that the only way I could tackle this puzzle would be to start with a thorough sort of the pieces. I used my puzzle trays and sorted into the six main shape types, as well as the edge pieces. Then I started the puzzle by doing the edge, further sorting the edge pieces to help me as I went along. Even though it's double-sided, the two sides are so distinct that this doesn't increase the difficulty of the puzzle.

That was the easy bit done! Then it was time to lay out all the remaining pieces. You really do need a lot of space when you are working on a jigsaw like this. Although the puzzles in this series only have 550 pieces, they are large pieces, so the completed jigsaw is the same size as a standard 1000 piece jigsaw. This puzzle took up my entire dining room table while I was working on it.

The golf ball puzzle was easier to solve because it was a repeating pattern. This puzzle does have a repeat, but only the one, and I was only able to identify two pieces that were repeated. So this isn't really a strategy that you can use to solve it. It's also not much help to use the reference image, although I did find it helpful in some places at the very beginning. 

So the way that I worked on the puzzle was to work off groups of three. At the start you have four corners available to work on, and as you add more pieces you have more to go on. I would remove a section of three pieces and then hold it over every piece that might fit in the space. As you can imagine this was a very slow process, especially at first! Some sessions I would only place two or three pieces.

There are some tiny areas of the puzzle which are almost black, so I was able to find some pieces that went together by looking for these. But almost all of the puzzle was put together one piece at a time. There is some distinction in the sizes of the pieces which helped a little bit - some of the rows were composed entirely of taller pieces and these were easier to spot.

Obviously putting together the puzzle does get easier as you go along, because you have fewer pieces to search through. The first quarter or so was the most difficult, but after that I did feel as though I was speeding up, and I definitely had more of a sense of which piece was more likely to fit in a certain place. The last quarter was when I really started to enjoy it!

I wrote recently about why I enjoy difficult jigsaw puzzles, and I definitely get a far greater sense of satisfaction when I put the final piece into a jigsaw like this!

I was convinced that I had missing pieces all the way through, so it was a relief to find that the jigsaw was complete. One the one hand, someone that has completed a jigsaw like this is a dedicated puzzler, and so they are likely to take good care of their puzzles. But on the other hand, it's the sort of puzzle that could have been left out on a table for months on end, with plenty of opportunity for pieces to go walkabout!

Of course it's a double-sided puzzle so I had to flip it over to see the sprouts side. This side of the puzzle also only has the one repeat, but I do think that it looks easier. There is a greater variation in the colours, you could probably pick out the lighter sections quite easily and I think it would be easier to pick out the individual pieces. I'll definitely be trying it at some point!

This is my current collection of 'impossible' puzzles. So far, along with this one I've completed the World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle - Kittens and the Double-Sided Impossipuzzle Golf Balls and Tees. I think I'm going to work on the Wildlife puzzle at the bottom next and then save the double-sided Smarties until last - that one really does look like a challenge!