Wow, now I feel like a slacker. My wonderful husband gave me this 9,000 piece puzzle for Christmas, and we’re expecting to spend the next few months working on it. (The description inside the box says 9,140 pieces, so technically it’s over nine thousand.) We just went to Ikea to get a couple more tables for it today.
This is the only large-scale Ravensburger puzzle I’ve worked with, but the quality is good. There are some pieces that fit into slots where they’re not supposed to go, which can cause much confusion, but it’s not too common. It helps that all the pieces are slightly rectangular, not square, so each piece only has two possible orientations instead of four. It came in two bags, one for the left half of the puzzle and one for the right half, so I guess we’re technically doing two 4,500 piece puzzles. We thought about mixing all the pieces together and doing it properly… for about half an hour. Then we promptly scrapped that idea.
I usually do it this way. Don’t have to put in all that boring time up front, don’t have to round up a bunch of bowls to put the pieces in, and I don’t always know which groups I’m going to want to separate the pieces into. Sometimes I’ll start that way, sifting out the pieces that are easy to find in the box, then change to a full sort when the pieces are hard to distinguish at a glance.
That said, the puzzle in the OP might demand the other approach. Separate into each solid color, and each color with black (further sorted into straight and curved edges). It’d still be a hell of a job.
I don’t understand all the hate for the “pieces in the box” solving method.
This works just fine for me. Perhaps that’s because this is the way I taught myself how to solve puzzles. Space was at a premium when I first started solving puzzles when I was a kid, and I have just continued to solve them this way. Cuts down on the space and mess factor.
as to this huge puzzle, what the heck are these paintings supposed to be? I was thinking of getting it, but I dont want to put something strange or obscene on the wall of my house.
They are strange drawings/paintings depicting odd scenes. I see the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” panel, but the other ones, wtf?
The largest puzzle I’ve done was 6.000 pieces (not divided) which took about a year and the entire large table in our sun room. My wife got me a 5,000 piece one (also Ravensurger) for my birthday, which I’m not going to start until I retire. I do lots of puzzles, mostly from the thrift shop which has a good selection, though I’m doing on on the Elements I got for Christmas now.
Ravensburger seems to like a limited number of piece shapes, and I’ve had problems with pieces fitting in the wrong place. The few colors in the one in the OP makes me think it would a be a lot tougher than it looks. $300 is a bargain for one that size, by the way.
For some puzzles, like the one I’m doing now, edge pieces are all one color and get done last. Better to start with intensive and reasonably small color splotches in the middle.
I’ve come up (but haven’t written up) a mathematical model of puzzle difficulty, which considers size, piece distribution, color distribution, and piece irregularity.
I have a mat but far prefer the puzzle boards that jigsaw catalogs sell. Doesn’t wreck the puzzle between doing, and you can cover it and keep it safe.
However, I advise dumping the cats and getting a dog. My dog doesn’t trash my puzzle except maybe accidentally knocking a piece off by enthusiastic wagging. And, get a Roomba, not a traditional vacuum. You don’t lose pieces with a Roomba.
I prefer to do the large solid colored areas first – sky, bodies of water, grassy fields and the like. Yeah, they take time to fit all the puzzle pieces together, but it’s usually easy to segregate those pieces from the rest, and once they’re out of the way you have a much smaller number of pieces to sort through for other areas.
I think this puzzle would be easier than a more standard one, in some ways - because all the sections ARE monochromatic, you could more easily separate by color, and do individual cartoon figures by color. None of this “is this sky, or lake”, “is this gray cloud or gray parking lot” or whatever.
This is one where I’d probably do the border last, unlike every other jigsaw I’ve done before.
We’ve made relatively little progress on the one my brother gave us. Yes, the border is finally done, and a few individual clumps, but it’s gonna be a long haul. And I have roughly 6 weeks to finish it or put it away, after that the dining room becomes a Girl Scout Cookie warehouse / workroom.
Maybe, but in this case I’d guess the monochromatic clumps are on the order of 500 pieces.
Back in the glory days of Springbok, before they were bought by Hallmark, they had a puzzle called “Little Red Riding Hood’s Hood” which was all read, which I actually did. Unless you are crazy enough to enjoy that, this puzzle might be tough. Tougher, probably, since as I said Ravensburger has boring pieces and the old Springboks had interesting ones.
I think it’s just me Any time spent organising them at the start is recouped many times by being able to just scan the landscape looking for certain piece classes. The laborious churning through box again and again wastes valuable concentration resources.
When space is tight, I pre-separate homogeneous areas such as water and sky, they get the box treatment until it’s their turn.
While not as impressive a feat as a 32,000 pieces, I did just complete a very cool puzzle. This from a guy who has trouble with his kids’ wooden puzzles. “No, Grant, Elmo goes here”
Anyway, it’s the 4D Cityscape Puzzle, featuring city maps with plastic skyscrapers and landmarks popping up. I picked Tokyo, for reasons apparent in my pictures.
I really, really want to do this one but do not have any space for it. I do remember the frustration of doing a Keith Haring puzzle that was much smaller (500 or 750 pieces)…the monochromatic pieces are boring, but small pieces of the black lines are surprisingly difficult to match up.
I am like Cugel’s sister and go through the box. Funny, I can’t stand the sort into bowls approach; it drives me nuts to do all the sorting at once!
Currently working on a 2,000 piece Starry Night that is driving me bats.
I just got an e-mail from Amazon. They’re selling this puzzle now for just over $200. That’s 2/3 of their pre-Christmas cost (and half of what some places listed it at).
Must not have sold as many as they’d thought. They probably have a closet full of these.
Ooh. I like it. The animals would be easy, the trees really tough. The box comes on wheels, which is impressive.
Not being Charles Foster Kane, I don’t have any place in my house where I could actually do it.
Since this was posted I’ve done the Berlin and New York versions of this puzzle. Kind of fun, but the buildings are usually not detailed enough to be all that identifiable unless they are unique, like the UN.
Any time spent organising them at the start is recouped many times by being able to just scan the landscape looking for certain piece classes. The laborious churning through box again and again wastes valuable concentration resources.
