Tag: puzzles

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Chicago

Chicago is a 500-piece puzzle from Dowdle. This was my first Dowdle puzzle and it was great! The packaging was so nice, and it came with a really good poster and a resealable bag to put your pieces in after finishing the puzzle.

The image was crisp and the pieces were good quality. I didn’t have any false fits and the puzzle was a nice level of difficulty. Definitely recommend!

I also loved this image of Chicago. I am originally from Illinois and I lived in the Chicago area for almost 4 years back in the 1990s. This picture reminded me of a lot of the places we would visit in the city.

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Ice Cream Truck (Repeat)

Ice Cream Truck is a 500-piece puzzle from Ceaco. It is part of their Food Truck series.

This is my second time doing this puzzle, but this is actually my second copy of the puzzle. I had done the puzzle several months ago and found that the quality wasn’t as good as the other food truck puzzles I had done. I thought that I wouldn’t enjoy doing it again, so I donated it to a local puzzle box. Later, I decided I *would* like to own the whole series, so I purchase it again, hoping the quality would be better, and it was.

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Rainy Day Blessings

Rainy Day Blessings is a 1000-piece puzzle from Theo’s Puzzles that was designed by someone I discovered on TikTok. She is also on Instagram and her handle both places is mjpuzzles25.

I love the image. I think it is such a charming scene, and the colors are so nice. The puzzle quality was good overall, but I did find the dark blue sections incredibly difficult. It took several days of painstakingly trying each piece and sometimes having to remove pieces that were in the wrong spot.

I am glad I persevered because it felt so good to finish this one. A year ago I would have probably given up.

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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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Mountain Camper

Mountain Camper is part of the Happy Camper series from Ceaco. It is a 300-piece puzzle from the artist Stephanie Peterson Jones. This is the first one I have done in this series, and it is such a fun puzzle!

I actually have already purchased a 5-pack with more Happy Campers in a variety of piece counts, so I will definitely be doing more of these. They are just so enjoyable to put together with all of the colors and textures going on. I just wish they were more than 300 pieces.

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Cats in Quarantine

Cats in Quarantine is a 500-piece puzzle from Exploding Kittens. I first did this puzzle last Thanksgiving. I needed a puzzle with a TV in it for a Facebook challenge, and this fit the bill, so I decided to redo it.

I really love this puzzle! There are so many fun things going on in it, most importantly the fact that two of the cats are doing a puzzle inside the puzzle!

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Windmills at Kinderdijk

Windmills at Kinderdijk is a 500-piece puzzle from RoseArt. Being primarily a landscape puzzle, this is not my usual style, but I needed a puzzle with a windmill on it for a challenge I am doing on Facebook, and I found this one at Community Aid for $1.99.

I only chose this one because it was 500 pieces; I know I would have hated it in 1000 pieces. But this size was manageable, so I still found it satisfying to complete. It did unfortunately have one piece missing right in the middle.

After I did this one, someone else posted an adorable illustrated puzzle with a windmill, which I would have gladly bought for this event. I did put that one on my wishlist for later!

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Aeries for Canaries

Aeries for Canaries is a 550-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Jane Wooster Scott. I believe this is the second puzzle of hers that I have done, and I picked it up at Community Aid.

This was an enjoyable puzzle to do. It was missing one piece, which is more common with thrifted puzzles. The image was also lifting off the backing, mainly on the knobs. I tried not to make it any worse, but I did keep catching the edges on my hand. Also, I wasn’t able to run my hands over the puzzle when it was finished – IYKYK!

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American Road Trip

American Road Trip is a 1000-piece puzzle from TDC Puzzles. It is a shaped puzzle depicting the 48 contiguous states with images of things that are associated with each state.

This is a random cut puzzle with a matte finish. I found the quality to be quite good and enjoyed the puzzling experience. It came with a poster that was as big as the actual puzzle!

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Cozy Front Porch

Cozy Front Porch is a 750-piece puzzle from Ravensburger. I got it from the puzzle box in Elizabethtown. It’s not my favorite type of puzzle to do, but I knew the quality would be good and that it would probably be a good puzzling experience. I do like the color palette of this image a lot, and I would call the experience satisfying.