Rembrandt's Danae (Russian Museum Collection)

Rembrandt's Danae

Step Puzzle, Russian Museum Collection 201?, imported from Russia

1000 pieces

27" x 19"

purchased new ($13) from Amazon

Difficulty level: Very tough bordering on brutal

I think Step Puzzle's Russian Museums series are some of the most beautiful puzzles being made today. I find the digital art puzzles that the big companies are all releasing quite hideous. I'm also not interested in doing a puzzle of cupcakes, or quilts, or jellybeans, or cats, or any of the standard subject matter for contemporary puzzles. Russia's Step, however, is publishing puzzles (some up to 3000 pieces) of incredible works of art owned by Russian and European museums.

They're not easy to find in the US--I got this one for $13 (including shipping) from Amazon, and they have a few others that are more expensive, available through third-party sellers. You can find a few more on ebay, but they are quite expensive (some over $100, plus shipping from Russia). At any rate I was happy to find this one, and hoped that the quality would be good.

The box itself is beautiful and high quality, with gold embossing on black matte. The pieces are a little thin, and the cut is very similar and generic, but the biggest problems are none of the pieces really fit tightly, and pieces fit in places they don't go. Since the fit is so loose, you often can't be sure if a piece is in the right place (this is the reason why the border isn't finished).

Overall, I love the image, and the quality of the picture is good. Here's where I got after a few hours:

Notice the gray section in the upper right. In the picture above, it's missing pieces. In the picture below, it's not, though I didn't add any pieces. Turns out I had several in the wrong place and the whole thing shifted over. This company's shoddy craftsmanship means that not only do you have to defeat the puzzle itself, you also have to outsmart the shortcomings of the product: pieces that fit in several places, etc. Notice the border at the top still isn't finished, because I cannot figure it out. Despite all this, I'm still having fun with the puzzle. If STEP had the quality of Ravensburger (a company that makes some of the ugliest puzzles on the market), they'd be my favorite brand.

Rembrandt had a dark palette, and like the other Rembrandt puzzle I did, the final push is all brown pieces, and here I have ~250 pieces to go. Step's piece similarity is driving me nuts. For every ten pieces I find, I find one that's in the wrong place already, so you end up having to backtrack over and over again. Some pieces fit perfectly well in more than one place.

Piatnik musical notes

Musical Notes

Piatnik, 20??

1000 pieces

27" x 19"

purchased new ($18) from these guys in Brooklyn, who, despite there being nothing about it on their website, have a huge selection of puzzles

Difficulty level: very tough

I identified four areas to work on initially: the border, the clefs, the double line down the middle, and the word cresc., which appears throughout in stacks of four. After that, it got tough. Part of the problem is that the pieces have very little variety, and some of the pieces don't actually go where they match/fit, so you have to do a little backtracking.

This is a difficult puzzle in that there are no singular areas to concentrate on; you can't work one area for a while and move on to the next. I find myself sorting the pieces by what is on them (small floating dash, letters/numbers, empty lines, blank space, etc), even though those things don't necessarily go together. I have a feeling this one is going to take a while, even at a mere 1000 pieces.

Next I pulled any piece that was part of a vertical line that separated measures and started making little 2-, 3-, and 4-piece matches.

The I focused on the four big blank lines, and putting together the longer thick black bars.

Once I made enough (very slow) headway comparing each piece with some identifiable marking to the artwork and putting it in place, I sorted the last 200+ pieces (all were the same "two holes, two notches" shape) into vertical and horizontal, and started attacking the horizontal spaces first.

Then it was just a matter of popping the vertical ones into place. When I got to the last piece, I realized that it didn't actually go in the last available slot, so I had to scour the puzzle like a map to find where I'd gone wrong before I could finish.

Jackson Pollock's Convergence

Convergence

Springbok, 1964

340 pieces

purchased opened (missing 14 pieces--ugh) from ebay ($15)

Difficulty level: highly difficult

Comes in a shoebox-style box. There are at least three versions of this puzzle: mine has a black bottom with this sticker on it, while there are others that have a blurb about Pollock and Convergence printed on the bottom.

The box comes with a rolled-up poster of Convergence. I have seen some of these on ebay that also come with a little booklet about Pollock; I don't know if mine never had that one or if it was lost.

I counted 332 pieces (of 340) before doing the puzzle so I was aware there were probably going to be some missing pieces. Once I got the border together I knew that at least four of them were from the border (ugh).

Then I just laid everything out roughly by shape and starting working. Due to the nature of the painting, and Springbok's unusual shapes and variety of pieces, this one is pretty difficult.

This puzzle is pretty brutal. Extremely slow going. But I did find one more of the border pieces.

It came together pretty quickly at the end . . .

. . . but those missing pieces are disappointing.

MB Super Challenge Series: Aspen Trees, Colorado

Aspen Trees, Colorado

Milton Bradley, Super Challenge (1985) Series #12

1540 pieces

31" x 23 1/2"

purchased opened (complete) from ebay ($4.75)

Difficulty level: super challenging

There are a lot of puzzles in Milton Bradley's "Super Challenge" series; this is the first one I have attempted. After an initial foray into the puzzle, it is indeed very difficult. Without a central or defining image, there's no clear area of attack--after doing the border I did the sky and then started on the grass. There are huge sections of red leaves and yellow leaves, but even after sorting all the pieces into piles there's no easy place to start. You just have to find a match and go from there. The problem with that, however, is that the pieces are very oddly shaped--most of them have at least one side that's mostly flat or has a small curve, so that it just abuts an adjacent piece, rather than locking in. (And the pieces just sort of "fall" together--if it has to "click" to another piece you're putting it in the wrong spot.) Furthermore, the pieces that do lock have a very loose fit, and with nothing other than the trees having a clear outline, it's sometimes tough to tell if two pieces that fit are actually supposed to go together. The colors on the puzzle, however, are much more vibrant, and the image more sharp than the photo on the box, making the box top of very little help--the box photo is also not cropped exactly like the image, so the top and right side don't match those corresponding pieces.

I started with the border and the little bit of sky, then was faced with 1400+ gray, green, yellow, and red pieces.

I should have done this one on a piece of white cardstock or something, since it looks like the same color as the floor (as seen through the glass table top). Next I attacked the grass and the red leaves, and started putting together any of the gray trees that abutted green or red.

When I was down to 250 or so pieces, I laid them out on white paper so they were easier to see, then sorted by shape--the oddly shaped "super challenge" pieces actually paired together very easily once I did this, and the last 200 pieces were a lot easier to slot (but still tricky even though they were all some shade of gray).

Brief panic at the end when I was one piece short. The piece was located in the oven. (Don't ask.)

Despite its technical flaws (loose pieces and a soft, incorrectly cropped box image), this one was fun. A lot of these Super Challenge series puzzles look brutal, so I will probably end up getting more of them at some point.

Golden Masterpiece Series: Rembrandt

Rembrandt, Young Girl at an Open Half-Door

Golden, 1970s(?), Masterpiece Series

1505 pieces

27"x33"

purchased sealed (complete) from ebay ($20)

Difficulty level: Very tough bordering on brutal

There are ten puzzles in Golden's Masterpiece Series (that I've identified: Rembrandt, Canaletto, Cezanne, Robert, Toulouse Lautrec, Courbet, Chardin, Degas, Renoir, and Manet), but this is the first one I've picked up.

This is where I got after one evening of working on the easy parts:

Once you assemble the frame, head, hands, necklace, and start on the wooden walls, you are left with over 1000 pieces in varying shades of brown:

I had to get a reading lamp and sit like a forensic examiner dividing all the brown pieces into groups, depending on their coloration--mottled brown (upper door), brown with black streaks (lower door), black with horizontal brown streaks (upper dress), black with vertical brown streaks (lower dress), to the point where I asked myself "Am I insane?" but then I'd snap together six or seven pieces and dove back in. Still very slow going, since the majority of the pieces left had little in terms of color variation.

Once I had enough pieces in place horizontally, I realized that for the most part, each horizontal row has a repeating pattern of two types of pieces.

Since everything left was either a dark brown or black with little to differentiate them, I separated them by shape. Then I just determined the types of pieces needed for a row across, and started using trial and error, and the big expanses of dark brown and black began filling in:

The last 218 pieces were tough. Almost no variation in color and all were the same basic shape, but it's done. A fun puzzle and a beautiful painting, but I think for the next one I will do something that's not so dark.