I saw this in a Christmas window on Sunday. Ravensburger, the jigsaw puzzle people, put out a 32,000 piece jigsaw puzzle* in a big damned box. The pieces appear to be standard size, but the completed picture (a Keith Haring set of images) is 17 feet by 6. The puzzle comes witbh its own hand truck, which was also in the display window. That’s because the puzzle weighs 42 pounds.
The store I saw this in (Jazams, in Palmer Square, Princeton) didn’t assemble the puzzle, because a.) they weren’t crazy enough to put together a 32,000 piece puzzle; and b.) the window wasn’t big enough.
I’m surprised that they didn’t make a bigger deal about this for the Christmas holidays, on the “new toy” announcements. Apparently they’ve been trumpeting this at Ravensburger for almost a year, and got themselves into Guinness’ record book.
It costs about $300, by the way (it can cost between $200 and $400 depending on where you get it)
I have a 5K-piece Ravensburger sitting on my dining room table now still in the box because I haven’t yet figured out how to deal with the cat situation.
The only way is to have a separate room and keep it closed off. But knowing the nature of cats, they will not tolerate having that door closed due to their need of conducting daily inspections of all things inanimate in every room, and will drive you bat shit insane with meowing until the door is opened.
Ye, gods, that looks hard. Lots of areas with no detail, and the same colors repeated in different parts of the puzzle. And I don’t trust that picture of the girl working on the puzzle, either. Mine never end up with a perfect unsolved section like that. I do the details first and finish with the monochrome areas. The one in the picture has just one section unfinished. I say it’s staged.
That said, I know how I’d start attacking this puzzle if the opportunity came up.
Which one? I’ve actually finished their Views of Modern Rome. I noticed at some point that the shapes of the pieces repeated. I suspect the cutter was something like a rolling pin, rolling right-to-left across the puzzle and cutting out the same pattern three times. If that’s how the new one is made, it might make solving it easier. You could have featureless pieces that fit in more than one place.
The same company had a 19,000 piece that I was tempted by; don’t know if they still make it. It was a mosaic of four antique maps of the world. It looked like there was enough detail to actually be solvable. The description made it sound like the pieces were separated into four sub-puzzles. I could never decide whether to mix them up before starting to get the legitimate 19,000 piece experience.
I had to run downstairs to look and I was wrong; it’s a 3000-piece, Magic Mountain. (newegg.com sells puzzles?) I like photographic puzzles, and they’re harder to find than they used to be, especially at the more challenging levels. The Views of Modern Rome looks like great fun with all of that meticulous detail. I might just have to get that for my husband’s birthday.
(Good grief, that Magic Mountain puzzle is $26.25 at Amazon and $48.39 at Sears!)
Are not most of these super-large puzzles packed in separate bags that let you do a section at a time? We had a 10,000 piece Bosch puzzle a few years ago that my wife and I assembled in five 2000-piece sections. I just assumed this would be the case with other such large puzzles.
The 32,000 piece puzzle is all in one big box. I don’t know if there are separate bags inside, but nothing says that there are. Reading the descriptions you get the impression that it’s al one big mess o’ pieces, but maybe they take pity on the puzzle-solvers.
Others from Ravensburger come separated into quadrants. (Here’s the one I was thinking of earlier; turns out it’s only 18,000 pieces.)
32,000 pieces, and 32 smaller images. Even in 32 bags this one would take a while. Although the picture in the link shows the lower right corner, which probably has the least detail.
Now that I take another look at it, the toughest part might not be in the images at all. The white space between images, and the straightedge black/white pieces that form the borders would be a challenge in themselves.
According to the Amazon description:
[ul]
[li]Features a retrospective with 32 individual, brightly-colored images of Keith Haring’s artwork [/li][li]Includes 32,256 precision-cut pieces packaged in eight separate poly bags [/li][li]Consists of just six colors plus black and white, adding to the already incredible challenge[/li][/ul]
But are those eight separate bags individual regions, or did they just segregate 32,256 pieces into eight bags at random? Robot Arm’s experience with the puzzles suggests the former, but if I were to read that description, knowing nothing of Ravensburger, I’d suspect the latter.
Egad. I’m grumbling about the one my brother sent me for Christmas and it’s only 1,000 pieces (but truly nifty - New York Times will take a satellite photo - from Google earth or something I guess - and turn it into a jigsaw puzzle. Now I have to reassemble our entire ZIP code).
I’m trying to think of a really cool way to thank him for coming up with such a gift. Anyone know any Saint Bernard breeders in the midwest ;).
What of jigsaw tactics? I dump all the pieces out onto the table and turn them right side up. Separate and complete the edges and corners (Unless its small, loose pieces must stay within the borders at first). Choose a stand out feature, hunt and peck for all the relevant pieces, then assemble in its position. Repeat with other features, eventually moving out all the unrelated loosies to outside the perimeter. At some point water and/or sky are put aside for the finishing task.
My sister leaves the pieces in the box, every time she needs a piece she has to paw through the jumble. Drives me mad.
This is how I solve a puzzle. Drives people insane, but I hate pieces out of the box.
This puzzle looks fairly easy. It would take some serious time for sure, but not that hard.
I am thinking of picking one up. I also like that 4 quadrant map one, also so maybe a visit to their website is in order.
I don’t have any of their puzzles, so I may start with a smaller one to see what kind of quality they are. That big one would most definitely need to be put on the wall, so if the quality sucked, I wouldn’t want to waste my time if I wasn’t planning on putting it up somewhere. I don’t really care for the design of the puzzle, so maybe they have other designs at this size.
I haven’t built a puzzle in quite a while, so this looks great!