Tag: 100 pieces

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A Few Mini Puzzles

When I made my recent trip to Illinois, I knew I would miss being able to puzzle whenever I wanted, but I didn’t have room to take many puzzles with me. So, in addition to the one new puzzle I took with me – the PieceRelax one I posted earlier – I took these three mini puzzles.

  • Cozy Kitchen from Trevell, 99 pieces, artist Marion Reau
  • Llama Bama Ding Dong from MicroPuzzles, 150 pieces
  • Mushroom Patch from WerkShoppe, 100 pieces, artist Emma Jayne

Here are the puzzle details from left to right:

I have done all of these before, but they were the perfect size to pack and I knew they would at least let me scratch the puzzling itch while I was away from home.

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Kellogg’s Cereal 6-Pack

Kellogg’s Cereal is a 6-pack of 100 piece puzzles from Spin Master Games. The puzzles include Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, Honey Smacks, Raisin Bran, Rice Krispies, and Froot Loops.

These puzzles were so cute and fun to build. I actually think they would work well for puzzle chess, so I will probably hold onto them for that. The Honey Smacks puzzle had an extra piece in it, which is better than missing a piece but probably means someone else will be missing it.

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Puzzle Chess with Renee

My friend Renee came over recently and hung out for an evening while she was on vacation. We ordered pizza and watched a couple of episodes of Tracker, and then we decided to play Puzzle Chess.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with puzzle chess, here’s how it works. You pick a small puzzle (we used 100 pieces) and you build the border together and lay out all the other pieces. Then you start a chess clock, which you can get on your phone, and take turns putting one piece into the puzzle. Once you have placed your piece, you tap your clock to end your turn and start the other person’s time. Whoever has the most time left when the puzzle is done is the winner!

We played four rounds, and I won three of them. To be fair, I puzzle all the time and Renee only does it when she is with me (except for sometimes on her phone). Our first puzzle was Popsicle Monsters from fishwisdom, and I won by 16 seconds.

The second puzzle was a Peanuts puzzle called Birthday from RoseArt. Renee won this one by 15 seconds.

The third puzzle was Beautiful Wild Animals from a generic Chinese brand. I won this one by 40 seconds.

The fourth puzzle was a Dr. Seuss puzzled called I Will Not Eat Green Eggs and Ham from Buffalo Games. This was the hardest puzzle we did and also the only vertical one. I won by 2 minutes and 5 seconds.

I love playing puzzle chess and am so happy when someone agrees to play it with me.

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Seaside Jigsaw Puzzles

As part of the puzzle haul I got from the friend from church who moved away recently, I got a set of Ceaco puzzles labeled “10 Seaside Jigsaw Puzzles.” I ended up doing six of them before I got tired of them and decided to stop. I know I could do the others later, but I don’t think I will.

The puzzles I did included two 100-piece puzzles and four 300-piece puzzles. I did not do the four 500-piece puzzles. Here are pictures of the ones I completed:

The Family, 100 pieces
Dolphin Universe, 100 pieces
Saturn’s Messengers, 300 pieces
Swimming Lessons, 300 pieces
Reach for the Heavens, 300 pieces
Tropical Fish Island, 300 pieces

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Puzzle Haul & Thomas Kinkade Puzzles

Check out my puzzle haul! A woman from my church is moving and gave me a bunch of puzzles she didn’t want to take with her. Of course, I said I’ll take them all! I’ll do the ones I like and them pass them all to other puzzlers.

The first ones I chose to do were the set of Thomas Kinkade puzzles. They were from Ceaco, and there were 3 of them. I have never done any of his artwork and thought I would give these a try even though they are not my normal style.

I had a pleasant time doing them. The largest one was a bit tricky because there was a lot more sky and also the border has a lot of false fits. I had to mess around with the border a few times to get it right.

Collector’s Cottage – 100 pieces
Stillwater Bridge – 300 pieces
Evening in the Forest – 500 pieces

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A Mini and a Micro

I recently treated myself to an early Christmas present and ordered several puzzles from Puzzledly. This included a mini puzzle and a micro puzzle, which I did right away.

Mushroom Patch is a 100-piece mini puzzle from WerkShoppe, and the artist is Emma Jayne. It came in an adorable zip-lock bag. The pieces were a nice size and the puzzle came together quickly. I did it without looking at the image to make it more fun. I think it would be a good candidate for puzzle chess.

Llama Bama Ding Dong is a 150-piece micro puzzle from MicroPuzzles. I have always wanted to try this brand, and I thought this image was so cute! The pieces were even tinier than I thought they would be, but I could still manipulate them with my hands and didn’t need tweezers or anything. The quality wasn’t great, as the pieces would seem to fit almost anywhere and I had to really pay attention to whether they fit exactly right.

Here is a picture of them side by side so you can see how much smaller the micro puzzle is than the mini puzzle. Quite a difference!

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Puzzle Chess

Last weekend I visited a friend and we played puzzle chess! To play, you pick a small puzzle (we used 100 pieces) and you build the border together and lay out all the other pieces. Then you start a chess clock, which you can get on your phone, and take turns putting one piece into the puzzle. Once you have placed your piece, you tap the clock to start the other person’s time. Whoever has the most time left when the puzzle is done is the winner!

We played twice and I won both times, although by less than a minute each time. The first puzzle we did was USA Map from Ceaco. It was an easy one and good quality.

The second puzzle we did was Diverse Underwater World from Ransunn. It was more difficult but still pretty easy but the quality was worse. The pieces had a grainy feel and were hard to fit together.

This was my first time getting to play puzzle chess and I really enjoyed it. I forgot how competitive I can be!

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Colorful Donuts

Colorful Donuts from fishwisdom is a cute little puzzle snack, no pun intended. I had bought it along with a couple of other 100 piece puzzles to use for puzzle chess. When I showed my friend Renee the three options I had, she said she didn’t want to do this one because it would just make her hungry for sweets! So when I needed a lower piece count puzzle for a puzzle challenge I was doing, I decided to use this one.

It was very fun to put together. I think this would have been the perfect puzzle for me at 6 or 7 years old with the colorful designs of the donuts and the bright backgrounds for each section. Very cute puzzle!

We didn’t get to play puzzle chess the night she was here because we ran out of time, but I still have two puzzles to use for it when we get the chance. I’m looking forward to it!