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!

Working on a super difficult jigsaw puzzle

Earlier this year I shared my experience working on the World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle - Kittens edition. This was a puzzle that I received as a gift when I was a teenager and had completed several times over the years. It's quite a challenge, although in my blog post I describe some ways to help solve it.

I love to browse charity shops for secondhand jigsaw puzzles, and so I thought I'd start keeping an eye out for some of the other puzzles in the series. There are loads and I have no intention of collecting them all, especially as many of the images don't really appeal to me - I'm not keen on cartoon puzzles and I'm selective about photographic puzzles. But I thought it would be nice to have a small collection of the ones with an image that I do like.

My Mum is helping with the hunt too, and she recently found me this one - Impossipuzzle Golf Balls and Tees. I've only solved the golf balls side which actually wasn't too difficult - however the tees side looks very challenging!

Recently I had a very successful charity shop haul and picked up another three puzzles to add to my growing collection. Two are from the World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle series and my favourite is an image entirely composed of Smarties. I passed over this one in a charity shop a couple of years ago and later regretted it, so I was really pleased to find another one. The other puzzle is similar to the kittens jigsaw and features a variety of different animals.

The third puzzle I bought is also from the Impossipuzzle series, and it's the one that I decided to start with. Baked Beans on one side and Brussels Sprouts on the other! It's very much a puzzle that needs to be fully shape sorted and completed piece by piece, so it's going to be my jigsaw companion for a little while yet.

I was working on it last night, placing a piece every five to ten minutes or so, and my son asked me whether I was actually enjoying it. Usually he sees me work on jigsaws with a pleasant picture that aren't too difficult and can be completed in a couple of days.

I realised that yes, even though it's very slow going and can be frustrating at times, working on a more difficult puzzle like this is really enjoyable. When you place a piece in any jigsaw you can get a small dopamine hit, but when you place a piece in a difficult jigsaw it's even more satisfying. And when it's finally completed you really feel as though you've achieved something that not everyone can (or would want to!) do.

When I'm putting together the puzzle I can really feel my brain working, and I feel that my skills have improved over time. If I have the chance to work uninterrupted then I can enter a 'flow state' and it helps me to feel calmer. 

I'm definitely not going to be exclusively working on 'impossible' jigsaw puzzles from now on, but if I spot one that appeals then I'll be picking it up to work on at some point!

Double-sided Impossipuzzle - Golf Balls and Tees - Solving tips

Having enjoyed The World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle - Kittens edition so much, I enlisted my Mum to help me search for similar puzzles on our charity shop trawls. 

I was delighted when she recently found this one for me - Impossipuzzle - Golf Balls and Tees! This is a vintage 550 piece puzzle from Funtime Gifts.

The pieces are large, so when assembled it is almost the same size as a standard 1000 piece puzzle. It's double-sided with a different image on each side - one side has repeating rows of layered golf balls, the other a scattering of different coloured tees. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the golf balls would be the easiest side, so this is where I started.

It was very easy to sort the pieces and assemble the edges, but this is when I got stuck. I just didn't know where to start! I spent several sessions just sitting and staring at the pieces trying to work out a strategy. I was initially thinking that I was going to have to do the whole puzzle just by piece shape.

But then I realised that you can use the shadows on the balls to work out which way many of the pieces should go. There are also white diamonds in the spaces between balls, and these always the same way up. I also noticed that many of the individual pieces had the same design on them, and I think this is the key thing to notice when it comes to solving jigsaws with a repeating pattern.

I began to group together pieces which looked the same, in particular those that formed the bottoms of the golf balls, using the dark shadow at the bottom to help. I was able to match up centre, left and right side pieces to make blocks of three which formed the base of a ball. These could then be linked to form an entire row across the puzzle.

I used the same strategy to add in a few more rows, sorting the pieces by the height of the black shadow on the piece. Each ball fits neatly across three pieces.

Once I had worked out this strategy I was flying! As you can see from the picture above, every remaining piece will attach to a piece of the puzzle that is already in position. It was pretty quick to solve the puzzle from here, using a mixture of shape sorting the pieces and the knowledge of the puzzle that I'd acquired so far.

There were very few false fits, and these were easily checked by flipping the pieces over and checking that they line up on the other side. Because of course the puzzle has another side, which to my eyes looks much more tricky! 

I flipped the puzzle over to take this picture, but I'm not sure I'll be attempting it from scratch any time soon!

There is a repeating pattern, with clumps of tees that are the same colour. But although the pattern is obvious when you see the completed image, it's much more difficult to see when you are looking at the individual pieces. I'll be hanging on to this jigsaw with the intention of giving it a go at some point in the future!

World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle, Kittens edition - Solving tips

The World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle series was released in the 90s, and as a huge cat fan and lover of jigsaw puzzles I was given this Kittens Edition puzzle when I was a teenager. I'm not usually one to choose very difficult puzzles, but I couldn't resist the image on this one, and I remember solving it without too much difficulty. 

I was able to solve it because I realised that there is a bit of a trick to completing it, and it's not nearly as difficult as it is made out to be. So today I thought I'd share how I completed this vintage puzzle, to show that it's not as daunting as it looks!

Why so difficult?

This 529 puzzle is double sided, depicting the same artwork on both sides, rotated 90° with respect to each other. The puzzle is then die cut once from each side so top and bottom are identical!

Why is it not so difficult?

All the pieces are the same shape and size, and they fit in a regular pattern. The cats are distinctive, with different shades, eye colours and patterns. There aren't really that many pieces, and if you have a decent sized table or puzzle board you can lay them out all at once for a clear view. If you spend time sorting the pieces using the method that I'll explain below then once you come to the assembly you are familiar with the pieces and you can put it together pretty easily. Also the description of the rotation is misleading, as that's not quite what is going on.

How to solve the World's Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle

The way this puzzle works is that the reverse side image is reflected along the diagonal, which runs from the bottom left to the top right corners. My son has better spatial awareness skills than me and helped me to understand, I still don't really get it but you just have to imagine a diagonal line running across it - I've included a photo lower down to illustrate it!

Start with the edges

There aren't many edge pieces. As you look through the puzzle pieces, you will notice that the majority of the pieces can be put together in pairs with an identical albeit rotated part of the image on each side.

This is the key to solving the puzzle. 

So sort out the edge pieces, then group them into their pairs. You will be left with two corner pieces which each have the same image section rotated, and two corner pieces which pair together. You need to find all the edge pieces before you can start putting them together.

Pick out one of the corner pieces that has the same image rotated front and back. In this puzzle, they will be the bottom left and top right pieces. Place the piece down, and this first piece will determine the top side of the puzzle. 

Then take all the edge pieces and separate them into their pairs. Turn one of the pieces over to show the reverse image. Keep the pairs clearly together! Now you have all the parts of the image laid out, so you can put together the edge. Start from the corner, and choose the piece from the pair that fits on one side. If it doesn't fit then use the other piece. Then the remaining piece will go the opposite side of the corner piece. It shouldn't take too long to put the edge together!

Sort the remaining pieces

I won't lie - this is a big job. But it's absolutely worth doing! You need to got through all the remaining pieces, and sort them into their pairs. Don't worry about which way up they are, just make lots of little piles of two pieces. The image on each will have the same orientation.

Not all the pieces have a pair. The pieces that run along the centre diagonal from bottom left to top right, in this puzzle nineteen pieces, will have the same part of the image on both sides, but rotated. Keep these to one side, but don't forget about them when assembling! You can place them down the middle if you like, but you won't know which way up they go until you place pieces around them.

Tips for sorting the pieces into their pairs

* When looking for pairs, remember that because the pieces are double sided, the match that you are looking for might be face down.

* Look for distinctive pieces, for example those that are all one colour or in the case of this puzzle the eyes are a good place to start.

* If you can't find a match for the piece that you are holding, turn it over and hunt for the reverse image.

* Group all the pieces with one dominant colour, and when you've established that they don't pair with each other then turn them over and look for the other side.

* Because the pieces are all the same shape you can orient them all the same way which makes it easier to find a match.

* Many pieces can be placed the correct way up because of the cat's face or ears, which helps when finding a match.

Ready for the final assembly!

That's the worst bit over with!

Take all your pairs, and like before place them together and turn one of the pieces over so that all the parts of the image are visible. Keep the pairs together! Ideally you will have enough space in your puzzle area to lay out every piece clearly.

From your pairs, one of the pieces will go one way up and one the other, but you don't know yet which is which. So I find it easiest to start from the edges. Once you have placed one piece, you know that the other piece in the pair will fit in the corresponding place on the reverse side. If the piece doesn't fit then you know that you need to use the other one from the pair. You can see the reflection in this picture:

I've tried to explain it more clearly by placing a line across the board showing where the image is reflected in the photographs below. You can see how the irregular groups of pieces that I have already placed at this point are reflected across to the other side of the puzzle. It took me a while to work this out, and even when I knew how the reflection worked I still found it tricky to work out where to put the second piece - often I had to flip the next piece over to see where to put it! You just know that if you've connected the first piece to an existing piece then the second piece will fit somewhere!

Once you've got going, you have lots of places that you can work off and it's not so difficult to spot the pieces that you need. Keep all the pieces oriented the same way to make finding them easier, and as I keep saying, don't muddle up the pairs!

Completed puzzle

All the pre-sorting really does pay off, and completing the puzzle shouldn't be too difficult. I really love this puzzle, it's a vintage reminder of childhood and I've done it lots of times now so it's easier each time as I remember all the different little cat faces.

Other puzzles in the series

There were lots of other puzzles that were a part of this series. I saw one in a charity shop not that long ago which was a repetitive pile of sweets, and decided that it wasn't for me as I was looking for easier puzzles at the time. There was a Baked Beans one too I'm sure. They do pop up quite often on eBay so they are still around in cupboards all over the country - If I spot another on my charity shop trails in the future I'll probably pick it up, just so I can see if it's solved in the same way!

What I did while my husband was away

I'm used to my husband being away for work one or two nights a week, but occasionally he goes away for a longer stretch. Recently he was away for over a week, and now that the children don't need my attention quite as much as they used to I enjoyed having some time to myself.

The first thing that I did was to build myself a 'nest'. I set myself up on the sofa in our orangery and I had plenty of space to lay out all my things without being disturbed. There is space to do a jigsaw, keep a pile of books, my cross stitch and my notebooks. Of course I have a lovely warm blanket, cushions, and space for a drink and snacks.

On the screens I had a list of television programmes to work through. My son and I watched the latest season of Percy Jackson, and we also watched the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures that we didn't get around to over Christmas. I had a playlist filled with longer Everest documentaries - my current fascination - and I've also recently been investigating Substack so I had fun setting that up and finding some new writers to subscribe to.

I wanted to make sure that I had plenty of screen free time too. I'm working on a cross stitch which although small is quite complicated, and it's stitched on dark fabric which means that I can only really work on it during the day. It's vaguely Christmas themed, so it would be nice to have it complete ready to display this winter!

I treated myself to a book order from World of Books, delivering me a nice new selection of Everest books. I'm building up quite a collection! Some of them are quite niche, so buying second hand is the cheapest way to get them. I also had a big pile of fiction books borrowed from a friend to add in the mix.

I worked my way to the end of my pile of new and new-to-me jigsaws, and I'm planning on re-doing some of the older ones in my collection before passing them on to new homes. I very rarely want to do a puzzle again, especially when it's so easy and cheap to find new or secondhand jigsaws in charity shops. This large Zodiac puzzle was only £5 new from Hobbycraft, and free to me as I used my Hobbycraft birthday voucher to buy it!

As well as indulging myself in my hobbies, when my husband is away it gives me the chance to clear the decks a bit. I gave his desk a good clean and got all the washing done that he had left lying around. I also saw the chance to work through any food that needed eating up. We spent the week eating leftovers from the freezer - like the roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings from Christmas that I had forgotten about! 

Of course I can and do indulge myself in my hobbies when he is at home, but it is nice to be able to catch up on some of the things that I enjoy doing by myself so we can do things together when he gets back!

A curated selection of Christmas themed jigsaw puzzles, with a literary twist

This post contains Amazon affiliate links

Two of my favourite things in life are jigsaw puzzles and books, and when Christmas is approaching I love to sit myself down in the living room with a hot drink, surrounded by festive decorations, and work on a Christmas themed jigsaw puzzle. Today I'm sharing my current wish list of Christmas jigsaws, and all of these puzzles have a literary theme, featuring Christmas related books, festive bookshelves, and cosy surroundings.

All of these jigsaw puzzles are from top brands which I trust to give a good puzzling experience (which can sometimes take a bit of hunting!)

First are two 1000 piece puzzles from Ravensburger. 

The first is called Home For Christmas (affiliate link) and the image shows a woman sitting in a comfy armchair knitting a long stripy scarf, in a very cosy living room scene framed with bookshelves. Maybe books aren't the focus of the image, but I love how they frame the picture and the whole thing makes me feel all warm and happy inside! 

The second is a puzzle that I received to review a few years ago and I still love - The Christmas Library (affiliate link). This image depicts a bookshelf filled with Christmas classics, like The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol and The Night Before Christmas, alongside a range of different festive titles which all have beautifully illustrated covers. Because the covers of the books are quite large and distinctive it's not too difficult to sort out the individual books, and I love all the little Christmas accessories hidden on the shelves. It makes me wish that I owned some of these books!

Next, instead of shelves of books, A Book Lover's Christmas (affiliate link) features snowy, winter scenes from books, poetry, short stories and fairy tales. The 1000 piece puzzle is packed with tiny details, and although the image appears simple at first there is a lot to spot. I love the illustrated style of the image, and the puzzle comes with a poster detailing the scenes that you can find in the puzzle, where they come from, and background information about them. 

Season's Readings (affiliate link) from Galison is a 500 piece puzzle with a Christmas scene set inside a bookshop. There's a sweet cat sleeping on the cosy sofa, a gorgeous tree hung with decorations, a broad table filled with festive treats and of course shelves of books. It's another lovely scene that I would like to step inside, and being a little smaller at 500 pieces the jigsaw could easily be completed in an evening or two. 

Another puzzle which would be quick and satisfying to complete is Festive Curiosities (affiliate link), a 200 piece puzzle from Ridley's. I can see this one being a simpler puzzle that you could bring out for the family to work on together, especially if you have younger children. It comes in cute tube packaging and features a lovely bookshelf filled with books, alongside Christmas decorations like a gingerbread house and nutcracker.

Finally, A Christmas Carol (affiliate link) is a double sided jigsaw puzzle which gives you double the puzzling experience. One side features the cover to the classic book, and the reverse is an extract from inside. The clever box is designed to look like a book sitting on your shelf, and I think this would make the perfect Christmas gift for a jigsaw puzzle lover.

I hope that you enjoyed my curated selection of Christmas themed jigsaw puzzles, and if you love a puzzle at Christmas, happy festive puzzling!

My Autumn themed jigsaw puzzle wishlist

This post contains Amazon affiliate links

I've been struggling lately with browsing for jigsaw puzzles on Amazon. Firstly, many of the puzzles are from "alphabet soup" brands, complete with poorly translated descriptions stuffed with key words. Secondly lots of them look very much like AI generated images with colours that are too vibrant, fuzzy details and they just look a bit off. Now AI does have it's place in the modern world, but for me at the moment that's not in jigsaw puzzles, so I've tried to pick out puzzles from respected brands. They may be a little more expensive but I hope that they are likely to be better quality in terms of both image and construction.

Unfortunately I can't link images from Amazon, so I hope that my descriptions will be good enough to encourage you to take a closer look. If you are searching for some good quality Autumn themed jigsaw puzzles for some puzzling as the nights draw in, I hope that you enjoy looking through my selection!

Galison - Autumn in the Meadow - 1000 piece (affiliate link)

This 1000 piece jigsaw features an illustration of an overgrown footpath which passes through a vegetable patch filled with pumpkins and chickens towards a tiny cottage half hidden by floating autumnal flowers. The colours are gorgeous, and this one looks like it would be pleasantly tricky and very satisfying to put together.

Elena Essex - Sunset Valley - 1000 piece (affiliate link)

Perhaps not quite strictly Autumnal, but with a rich palette of reds and oranges this illustrated scene features rolling hills with colourful cottages nestled in between. This puzzle has plenty of interest and I think would not be too challenging once you had sorted out the different areas.

Galison - Nature in Autumn - 500 piece (affiliate link)

I love a smaller puzzle that can be completed in an evening or two, and jigsaw features images of various flora and fauna which you might see while out and about in Autumn. There's a lot of detail in the pictures and a lovely selection of colours.

Cobble Hill - Country Diary: Autumn - 1000 piece (affiliate link)

This puzzle features illustrations from The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady and so it's a group of nostalgic paintings along with handwritten inscriptions. There is a huge amount of detail in the image and it seems realistic in the types of things that you might spot in Autumn. The colours are muted in style with the vintage design, and this would be a lovely relaxing puzzle to slot together.

Galison - Autumn in the Neighbourhood - 1000 piece (affiliate link)

Another Galison puzzle with gorgeous Autumn colours, this is a street scene featuring a row of terraced houses framed by trees in their autumnal colours and decorated with wreaths and pumpkins. The houses would be really fun to put together and the beautiful smudged leaves would be a great challenge!

Galison - Autumn at the City Market - 1000 piece (affiliate link)

This Autumn scene features a city skyline with a row of lovely coloured trees across the centre, with market stalls and yellow taxi cabs in the foreground. It's a great contrast between nature and the city, and there are plenty of details to spot with the intricate stalls and the passersby. 

My experience buying jigsaws in charity shops

I've been buying books secondhand in charity shops for years, but even though I love jigsaw puzzles and find them expensive to buy new, until recently I had never considered buying one secondhand. But it I've been doing some browsing in local charity shops recently and I thought I would give it a go. 

I find that prices range from around £3-4 which is a fraction of the cost of a new jigsaw, and when I expect pieces to be missing I'm less worried than when I've paid a lot for a new puzzle.

Here are all the charity shop jigsaws that I've completed so far - and I'm delighted to announce that none of them had a single missing piece! Some of them even had the edge pieces pre-sorted for me!

Spring on Park Avenue - Galison

Minifigure Puzzle - Lego

Space Hoppers and Scooters - Gibson

The Artist's Desk - Ravensburger

Shiny Summer - Andrea Tilk

The Fantasy Bookshop - Ravensburger

Cats and Plants - Corner Piece

There are a few things to be wary of with a secondhand puzzle. I have one jigsaw in my to do pile which has quite a strong smell of smoke. I'm hoping that as I work on it the smell will dissipate, but it is putting me off making a start. Another couple have had a slight smell of perfume, and one had quite a few cat hairs in the box. Not a problem for me as I'm not allergic, but I have to keep hoovering my jigsaw area.

World Wonders Panorama - Ravensburger

My current puzzle is a charity shop find that I was really pleased with. I was looking for some jigsaws with a larger piece count as they can be very expensive to buy new, and I love maps. I found this Ravensburger 2000 piece World Wonders Panorama map jigsaw which I was delighted with -  I paid just £4 instead of the £30 or so it would cost new. Ravensburger is my favourite jigsaw puzzle manufacturer as I find that the pieces are sturdy and fit together really well. I've barely started but I'm working on it with the assumption that there will be pieces missing - it will be amazing if it's complete!

Review - Santorini jigsaw puzzle from Cloudberries

I received this puzzle in exchange for a review

Recently I was contacted by Cloudberries and asked if I would be interested in reviewing a jigsaw puzzle from their beautiful range of puzzles. Of course I was! I chose a puzzle from the Small Batch series - random cut 1000 piece puzzles with designs featuring irregular shaped pieces. I was drawn to Santorini (affiliate link) which is inspired by an idyllic Greek island with traditional blue and white buildings, dark blue tiles and colourful yellow birds sitting in a beautiful potted fig tree. 

The image on the front of the box is only a part of the full illustration, so when browsing the puzzles be sure to look at the back for the full picture. Each puzzle comes with a full size poster of the design.

I bought some sorting trays back when I was tackling my 3000 piece jigsaw puzzle and I've found them invaluable for completing puzzles every since. The ones I have are no longer available but there are some very similar ones here - Becko Stackable Puzzle Sorting Trays (affiliate link). This puzzle was quite easy to sort as there are large blocks of similar colours which are fairly distinct. 

I soon realised that this wasn't a puzzle to start with the edges as there were just too many yellow edge pieces. Instead I worked on the large blocks of colour and quickly completed the blue tiles and the yellow pot. Then I was able to sort out the background pieces into sections of white and pink and put together the birds sitting against the white moon.

Next I decided it was time to tackle the rest of the edge. It wasn't easy! Although the pieces are randomly cut there is some repetition across the puzzle as a whole, so I did have a few false fits. This isn't a problem on a patterned part of the puzzle but it did affect some of the yellow border pieces, although it didn't take me too long to sort out. Then it was time to tackle the last area, the main background part of the puzzle, and I suspected that this would be more challenging.

It did take me quite a time to get to grips with the remaining part of the puzzle. This is where the shapes of the pieces were really helpful, as they are all so unique it's not too difficult to find the piece that you need. It's difficult to shape sort though, and you really have to work your puzzling muscles hard to remember the shape and colours of the piece that you are hunting for! It was very satisfying to finally find a piece that I'd been searching for and to slot it into place.

I really enjoyed completing this puzzle. The colours are so vibrant and I love the design. It wasn't an easy puzzle but there was a good balance between the easier and more difficult sections, and I really enjoyed the challenge. 

You can see all the puzzles in the range here - Cloudberries Small Batch jigsaw puzzles.

A review of the four new jigsaws that I received for Christmas

For Christmas I was lucky enough to receive some lovely jigsaw puzzles, and so I thought I'd do a quick review of them all in case you are looking for some puzzling inspiration! They are 1000 piece puzzles with bright, colourful designs and all of them were quite quick and easy to put together - a nice change after my larger 3000 piece puzzle!

Parkside View by Galison (1000 piece)

This is a colourful view of a city park with skyscrapers in the background. At first I thought it was going to be a very tricky puzzle with all the different colours and shades, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. The pieces only come in two shapes and so you can work out the orientation. Once you've put together the sky and the buildings, as long as you have space to lay out the majority of the pieces then you can work on a tree at a time, picking out the distinctive pieces that you need for that section. It was a bit difficult to take apart, each piece needed to be removed separately which took a little while. There was a separate poster with the image which I always appreciate, especially as the square box doesn't show the complete design. I loved the beautiful, vibrant colours.

Art Cats by Happily (1000 piece)

This was a very easy sort, as you can identify the parts for most of the cats from individual pieces. In fact after I'd sorted out the edge pieces and the text I didn't really bother sorting the rest, I just hunted through the box for the pieces I needed. I didn't want to finish it too quickly! Each cat is drawn in the style of a different artist, with an appropriate cat themed name underneath which makes for a really fun illustration. The pieces are solid and chunky, and it didn't take too long at all. 

Book Nerd by Workman Puzzle (1000 piece)

I didn't realise until I read the box that this puzzle is based on the book of the same name, which looks like a fun, illustrated read about the love of books. The first thing that I noticed about this puzzle was arrows on the back to indicate which way up the pieces go, which I've not seen before. I didn't need them though! The pieces of this puzzle are all really interesting different shapes which made the puzzle fun to put together. I started with the figures and the plants and then enjoyed piecing together the different sections of books. I loved the variety of books in the image, it's not just classic and well known books but modern books too. I enjoyed the style of the illustration and all the different objects that go on the shelves along with the books.

Classics by Happily (1000 piece)

This puzzle was another easy sort. Each book joins to the edge, so once that is in place you can work on a book at a time. This means it's a great puzzle to work on in small bursts, even if you only have a few minutes to put together one of the spines. Although the books include some of my favourite authors - Margaret Atwood, Daphne du Maurier - along with a good selection of adult and children's books, I did think there could have been a bit more variety in the titles! The 37 books include 7 by Jane Austen, including 'Love and Freindship' which apparently isn't a spelling mistake, Anne of Green Gables features twice and books by Arthur Conan Doyle three times. That aside, I enjoyed the contrasts in the colours and patterns of the book spines, and it was a pretty easy and fun jigsaw to put together over a few evenings.

I feel like I've been a very busy puzzler this year so far! Now I just have one borrowed puzzle to get on with and then I might take a bit of a break, or go back and do some of the old favourites in my collection!