A Perfect Circle!

While my last month's blog topic was about speed puzzling, I also really love leisurely assembling challenging puzzles. Today I want to highlight a special collection of 3 puzzles released this year in 2023 from Pomegranate. They have this completely unique set of CIRCULAR puzzles.

Now, if you are not familiar with the brand, I would like to suggest some other blog posts to read further:

Pomegranate brand spotlight

Top 10 Pomegranate puzzles (2019)

This blog focuses solely on the new line of round puzzles. I always love round puzzles. The shape requires a different puzzle cut, and oddly shaped pieces are just so exciting to me! I find, based on the cut, the usual strategy is to start at the center and work your way out. Check out fellow ambassador Tracy’s blog on round puzzles to see some examples!

The first from this collection that I puzzled was Charley Harper’s Hawk Mountain. I chose to do a round puzzle on March 14, in honor of Pi day (3/14). 

The first thing you’ll notice, looking at the cut, is there is not an obvious radial pattern as many other brands have in their round puzzles. So for this puzzle I used the image to guide me, following the lines and stripes that are characteristic of Charley Harper’s art. I was so impressed by the hexagonal shape of the pieces. They are each unique! There are so many different piece shape possibilities when there are 6 sides! 

This was a satisfying puzzle and held up well to a puzzle pick up challenge!

The second one from this collection that I tackled was Macrocosm by Christopher Marley. This one definitely kicked it up a notch! This image is jam packed with unique BUGS. 

I started out with the border, and the big purple butterfly. I tried to focus on the insects which had more distinct coloring or other features, for an initial sort through.

After some time, I realized many of the insects were similar looking, so this particular puzzle required me to refer to the poster frequently. I was really able to appreciate the attention to detail. 

The puzzle challenged me the whole way through! I brought this one on a family vacation to Lake Michigan and worked on it over breakfast amongst the kids’ cheerios and Legos. 

It was really satisfying to finish and hold it up against the beautiful green background of the Airbnb home we were staying in. This was a really lovely puzzle, but I did not enjoy spending so much time studying the image. I get impatient with very detailed puzzles sometimes!

That being said, it was a very interesting shift to the 3rd puzzle in this series, Springtime by Alma Thomas. The poster image was of quite limited utility this time! But I thoroughly enjoyed this build.

As with other brands’ round puzzles, this one was very easy to start in the center. The next logical step was the border, but that’s when things got challenging.

There is quite a lot of red in this image, so I saved that for the end. There are 2 sets of green, yellow and blue rings, so this is what I tackled next. But how could I distinguish the inner from the outer? Well, it turns out the order of the colors is slightly different. The outer ring is blue, yellow, green, and the inner ring is blue, green, yellow. So by separating these out, I was able to complete the outer ring. I also noticed that the only time green and red were directly adjacent was on that outer ring. 

Once I had these 3 sets of rings completed, I had to connect them! I had 115 pieces of red paint to solve! It is harder to sort by shape with so many shapes, but I grouped them into a few general groups - pieces where there are 2 or more adjacent knobs, pieces with 2 or more adjacent holes, and pieces with both. From there it just took a lot of attention to detail in terms of the shapes, and the particular shades of red. 

I do generally prefer this type of tedium over studying the picture (haha!). But filling in those final pieces was HARD! Either way, I enjoyed great satisfaction, completing these difficult puzzles! I highly recommend them and can’t wait to see the next release in this collection! I think a Paul Heussenstamm mandala would make a great image!

Happy puzzling!

Best,

Alyssa

@puzzlesatoz