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!

Some tips for completing a larger jigsaw puzzle

Recently I completed my first larger jigsaw puzzle - Garden of Sun Signs by Ravensburger. At only 3000 pieces I realise that I am barely scratching the surface when it comes to enormous jigsaw puzzles, but as I've only worked on smaller puzzles before I thought I would share a few tips that I picked up along the way for tackling a bigger puzzle.

Probably the most important thing to consider when you are looking at larger puzzles is whether you have enough space to lay it all out in one piece. You can make a start by working in sections, but eventually you are going to want to work on the puzzle as a whole. It doesn't necessarily need to be a permanent space like a table, you can use large foam board sheets or similar to build a base and use them to extend your table space or to work on the floor. 

If you have small children or pets, make sure that you can pack away the jigsaw when you aren't working on it, maybe by storing it high up, and putting away any sorting trays and boxes when not in use.

Sort, sort, sort! I used to think that sorting the pieces got in the way of solving the puzzle until I began watching videos by puzzling YouTubers and realised that sorting the pieces is as important as placing the pieces. I find stackable puzzle sorting trays really useful, and I also use kitchen trays and the jigsaw box itself. 

Also, one good sort won't be nearly enough. You'll always miss some pieces, and once you've got a feel for the jigsaw it will be easier to go back through and sort again to find the pieces that you need. Try and keep all the sorted pieces the right way up so that you can easily spot one that you need.

Try not to worry too much about missing pieces as you go along, they almost always turn up and often look different to how you had imagined them while searching. 

Large sections of sorted pieces can be put away to one side while you work on other areas to make it feel less overwhelming.

Don't necessarily worry about completing the edge first if this is the way that you normally tackle a puzzle. Having a large empty area with just a flimsy border around it can make the puzzle more fragile and it's easy to knock pieces out of place. Also, sometimes it's easier to put the border together when you've made a good start on the puzzle, especially if you have large sections that are the same colour.

Take progress photos, even if you don't plan on sharing them with anyone. I love watching my jigsaw go from trays of sorted pieces to completion.

Search online for people that have completed the same puzzle - Reddit is a good place to look and also YouTube for progress videos. Just type Reddit into the search bar followed by the title and brand of your puzzle. I find it really interesting to see how different people tackle a puzzle, for example which areas they choose to start with. You might also pick up some tips specific to your puzzle. 

I'd love to work on a 5000 piece puzzle at some point but there are two barriers - the space it would take up and the cost! I could work on our dining room floor if I moved all the furniture out the way, but I don't think that would be very popular with the rest of the family!

A jigsaw challenge for the New Year - the 3000 piece Garden of Sun Signs from Ravensburger

Towards the end of last year I found myself getting back into jigsaw puzzles. I bought a couple of 1000 piece jigsaws with my birthday money, and got out some of my favourites to do again. I also started watching some puzzlers on YouTube, and that made me want to have a go at a larger and more challenging puzzle.

I spent a lot of time researching. I decided to go with a Ravensburger puzzle as I've completed many of their puzzles in the past and always found that they had a good variety of piece shapes that were enjoyable to put together. I settled upon 3000 for the number of pieces, mainly because any larger than that I just don't have the space. 3000 pieces forms a jigsaw that is about the size of my dining table. 

The design that I chose is called Garden of Sun Signs by Ravensburger (affiliate link). I kept a close eye on prices for a few weeks and found it reduced to around £34 on Black Friday which I thought was a good deal. It's an illustration of a garden filled with plants and trees, and contains a representation of each sign of the zodiac. I'm not particularly into astrology, I chose this puzzle because I liked the illustration style, the detail, and I thought that it had several areas which would be easy to separate and work on. There is a border on each side which looks quite distinctive, and plenty of variation in colour and texture.

I started the puzzle a couple of days after Christmas with a big sort of the pieces. It took me about two hours, and I made great use of the jigsaw puzzle sorting trays (affiliate link) which I received for Christmas. I sorted into two different types of edge pieces, internal pieces with a border section, pinks and purples, browns, blacks, and other interesting pieces.

That left me with a lovely big box of other pieces which I put to one side!

I decided to start by working on the brown pieces. These are mainly found in the top half of the jigsaw along the top border. There are also some distinctive blue clouds which I had picked out in my initial sort. I soon discovered that most of the brown pieces were also linked to the large trees, so I decided to work on those as well.

This meant that I had to do another resort of the pieces to pick out all the tree branches. Then as my eye for finding the pieces that I wanted developed I went on to do a third sort through. These pictures show my progress so far after three sorts. As you can see, although I think I'm doing well with putting the pieces together I'm still missing a few pieces!

These two sections connect together and along with a third smaller section in the bottom right they make up almost the whole top few rows of the jigsaw. For the time being I'm working on the two removable sections from my puzzle mat, as the dining table is currently in use for another project. I'd love to be able to spread it all out, but I know that this is a long term project and I can't justify taking up the whole table for months at a time!

I've now started working on the purple and pink rocky areas which mainly connect to what I already have in place. The tree branches were challenging but doable, however the rocky areas are much more difficult. There are very subtle colour and shape variations which help, but I'm mainly working by shape sorting and trial and error. I'm fairly confident that I've pulled out most of the pieces at least, but it's slow going when I'm only placing a few pieces each session. 

This is definitely a project which is going to occupy me for a little while yet!

Why I love a Christmas jigsaw

I've just finished my first Christmas jigsaw of the season! This puzzle is a brand new one which I bought with my birthday money. It's a 1000 piece puzzle from Ravensburger called Magical Christmas Market (affiliate link) and it's lovely, an illustration of a Christmas market with a starry sky and pretty snow covered houses in the background, festive stalls, and a variety of different people out and about doing their Christmas shopping. It was just the right level of difficulty too - easy to get the top half of the jigsaw completed and then a little more challenging in the middle. I loved and it's definitely becoming a permanent part of my jigsaw puzzle collection!

I love doing a jigsaw (or several!) at Christmas. It brings back many happy memories of working on a puzzle when I was little, and it's a great solo or family activity. They don't all have to be Christmas themed - a couple of years ago I bought an Animal Crossing jigsaw which the children enjoyed helping with - but it is nice to work on one with a festive theme.

I have a few other Christmas jigsaws which I will be working on over the next couple of weeks. I have a set of two 500 piece vintage style jigsaws which I like as they are quite easy to do, and I also love the Ravensburger Christmas Library puzzle (affiliate link) which I received to review a few years ago. 

I'm also hoping that I might be lucky enough to receive a puzzle or two in my stocking this year, and I have another birthday money puzzle waiting for me to complete in the New Year once the dining table has finished its Christmas dinner duty - watch this space!