Puzzler's Choice
It’s about two years since I started writing for PuzzleWarehouse, and I decided to do something different this month. While my previous blogs have all had a theme for the puzzles, this month I’m going rogue! If I had to name a theme for today, I would call it “Puzzler’s Choice.”
So why that? Well, while puzzling to a theme can be fun - doing all holiday puzzles, or featuring a particular brand - that style leaves me with a tall stack of jigsaws that never quite fit in with the others. The solution? You’re reading it now: Puzzler’s Choice. Today I’m sharing a few of the puzzles I’ve had on hold - the ones that stare at me when I open the closet, saying “please let it be my turn.”
The first to come off that stack is called “Local Fauna,” and is from New York Puzzle Company. It’s not for the faint of heart, coming in at 1500 pieces, and featuring a wall and a sidewalk that are each an awful lot of one color. If you like a challenge, it’s worth giving this one a shot. I chose it because it’s cute seeing all those animals on the leash. Such a happy pig, and the perfect expression for the cat! Speaking of the cat, I think it’s my cat who is guilty of making that one piece (above the bird’s wing) disappear. I love my cat, but I could do without his frequent napping on my puzzles.
With that one bagged and ready for a friend, I grabbed a puzzle from a company I hadn’t seen before. This is “The Driver Kitty,” 1000 pieces from Yazz. I was surprised I had never done a Yazz before, because their catalog has a lot of images that are exactly my style. I haven’t picked out my next one yet, but I’m looking pretty hard at both “Geometric Cat” and “Library Week.”
Poking around my puzzle stash when Kitty was finished, I decided to take a break from the animal world and get to one of the most eye-catching flower images I own. I’d been ogling this one for a while, so I was happy to finally have a chance to get it on my table. This beauty is “Palette of Roses,” a fun 1000 pieces from Hart Puzzles.
I’ve done a few from Hart before, and have featured a couple of them in earlier blogs. You may remember “Road Trip in France,” or maybe “Art of Music.” Hart, as a company, is extremely community conscious and donates regularly to a variety of organizations, including the Smithsonian, the American Heart Association, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. I have no problem at all buying even more puzzles from their collection in future.
And that’s the end of the line for Puzzler’s Choice. I had hoped to squeeze in a couple more, but “real life” requires some attention so off I go. It was fun tossing a bit of random selection into my puzzling mix - I’ll be sure to do it again sometime.
Happy Puzzling.
Phil (aka Puzzle Buster)