Home Archive by category "Puzzles" (Page 12)

Category: Puzzles

Puzzle: Pie baking day by Janet Kruskamp


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 45.26cm x 35.56cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, The Canadian Group, Country Kitchen series, 2011, #42225-3
Artist: Janet Kruskamp

Puzzle: The orange curtains and the checkered parts are an easy place to start. Flowers on the window sill, apples, edge of the green table, sky, and tree can follow. The pipe, door frame, garden, and beige cupboard can be finished next, leaving the cans, dishes, and a few other small areas to complete. Very pleasant and staightforward puzzle. It also includes a shortbread cookies recipe and a red puzzle piece cookie cutter.

Baking: In ancient history, the first evidence of baking occurred when humans took wild grass grains, soaked them in water, and mixed everything together, mashing it into a kind of broth-like paste. The paste was cooked by pouring it onto a flat, hot rock, resulting in a bread-like substance. Later, this paste was roasted on hot embers, which made bread-making easier, as it could now be made anytime fire was created.

In ancient history, the first evidence of baking occurred when humans took wild grass grains, soaked them in water, and mixed everything together, mashing it into a kind of broth-like paste. The paste was cooked by pouring it onto a flat, hot rock, resulting in a bread-like substance. Later, this paste was roasted on hot embers, which made bread-making easier, as it could now be made anytime fire was created. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Blue Stove by Janet Kruskamp


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 45.26cm x 35.56cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, The Canadian Group, Country Kitchen series, 2011, #42225-1
Artist: Janet Kruskamp

Puzzle: I have started this one with the blue regions: the door, the stove, the rug, and the chair. Window frame, white flowers in the vase, red apples, bowl on the table, the vase, the plaque on the stove, and the garden path are smaller self-contained regions. The flower garden and the light part of the floor easily fall into place, and the brown under the vase and all around and on the stove are the more subtle parts left over. Not a hard puzzle to do, it helps to have natural light at the end. The puzzle includes a shortbread cookies recipe and a red puzzle piece cookie cutter.

Stove: The Old English word stofa meant any individual enclosed space, such as a room, and ‘stove’ is still occasionally used in that sense, as in ‘stoved in’. Until well into the 19th century ‘stove’ was used to mean a single heated room, so that Joseph Bank’s assertion that he ‘placed his most precious plants in the stove’ or Rene Descarte’s observation that he got ‘his greatest philosophical inspiration while sitting inside a stove’ are not as odd as they first seem.

In its earliest attestation, cooking was done by roasting meat and tubers in an open fire. Pottery and other cooking vessels may be placed directly on an open fire, but setting the vessel on a support, as simple as a base of three stones, resulted in a stove. The three-stone stove is still widely used around the world. In some areas it developed into a U-shaped dried mud or brick enclosure with the opening in the front for fuel and air, sometimes with a second smaller hole at the rear. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Canning Day by Janet Kruskamp


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 45.26cm x 35.56cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, The Canadian Group, Country Kitchen series, 2011, #42225-2
Artist: Janet Kruskamp

Puzzle: A logical starting point are the checkered curtains, followed by the yellow batches of colour and the stove. Floor boards, white table, garden path and flowers, the patches of sky, and the vegetables make stand-alone regions that are easy to put together. Door frame and window frame logically fall into place. The rug, corn, and places under the stove follow, to leave only the cupboards and a few dark areas. Easy and fast puzzle to do. It also includes a shortbread cookies recipe and a red puzzle piece cookie cutter.

Canning: Canning is a method of preserving food in which the food contents are processed and sealed in an airtight container. Canning provides a typical shelf life ranging from one to five years, although under specific circumstances a freeze-dried canned product, such as canned, dried lentils, can last as long as 30 years in an edible state. In 1795 the French military offered a cash prize of 12,000 francs for a new method to preserve food. Nicolas Appert suggested canning and the process was first proven in 1806 in test with the French navy and the prize awarded in 1809 or 1810. The packaging prevents microorganisms from entering and proliferating inside.

To prevent the food from being spoiled before and during containment, a number of methods are used: pasteurisation, boiling (and other applications of high temperature over a period of time), refrigeration, freezing, drying, vacuum treatment, antimicrobial agents that are natural to the recipe of the foods being preserved, a sufficient dose of ionizing radiation, submersion in a strong saline solution, acid, base, osmotically extreme (for example very sugary) or other microbially-challenging environments. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Milllies Kitchen


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.57cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, The Canadian Group, Canvas Collection series, 2011, #44716-5
Artist: H. Hargrove

Puzzle: A rather detailed puzzle with many small regions of colour. White sink and plate, garlic and the orange objects behind it are probably the easiest place to start. The metal watering can, the light fixture, and the dark yellow/orange on the top shelf and the book in the lower left are several groups of colour that are easy to do. The tree and the red of the shed outside, followed by the window sill, leaves mostly dark regions to complete the puzzle. I found it quite an engaging one.

Asparagus: Asparagus has been used as a vegetable and medicine, owing to its delicate flavour, diuretic properties, and more. It is pictured as an offering on an Egyptian frieze dating to 3000 BC. Still in ancient times, it was known in Syria and in Spain. Greeks and Romans ate it fresh when in season and dried the vegetable for use in winter; Romans would even freeze it high in the Alps, for the Feast of Epicurus. Emperor Augustus reserved the “Asparagus Fleet” for hauling the vegetable, and coined the expression “faster than cooking asparagus” for quick action. A recipe for cooking asparagus in the oldest surviving book of recipes, Apicius’s third-century AD De re coquinaria, Book III. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Autumn at seaside


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 54.5cm x 70cm
Producer: Golden, Guild Puzzle, #4710-57
Puzzle: One of the logical ways of approaching this puzzle, is to put together the long white birch tree trunks first, giving a continuous vertical anchoring. The sea and the lighthouse are trivial to put together, and provide a line of horizon, so that the sky and top of the rocks fall into place. Orange and red leaves are the next logical choice, leaving the more uniform pieces of rocks and brush to the end. No name is provided on a box – it would have been nice to know where this photo was taken.

Birch tree: The bark of all birches is characteristically marked with long, horizontal lenticels, and often separates into thin, papery plates, especially upon the paper birch. It is resistant to decay, due to the resinous oil it contains. Its decided color gives the common names gray, white, black, silver and yellow birch to different species.

Birch trees are typically rather short-lived pioneer species widespread in the Northern Hemisphere particularly in northern temperate and boreal climates. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Tulip Rows, Mossyrock, WA


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 51cm x 68.5cm
Producer: Lafayette Puzzle Factory, Colorluxe series, 2009, #1500
Puzzle: The sky, trees, and the horizon with narrow flower rows of different colours are the easy part of this puzzle. The yellow and red tulips, together with green leafy regions present more of a challenge. Not very hard to complete, but having good lighting is a bonus.

Mossyrock: Mossyrock is a city in Lewis County, Washington, United States. The population was 759 at the 2010 census. The city began as a trading post named Mossy Rock in 1852, after a 61 meter high moss-covered rock at the east end of Klickitat Prairie. The Indian name for the area of Mossyrock was Coulph. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Dragon Fire by David Penfound


Size: 550 pieces
Dimensions: 61cm x 46cm
Artist: David Penfound
Producer: Ceaco, Glow in the Dark series, #2333-43
Puzzle: The dragon’s wings, flames, the firepit, and the woman’s robes are distinct enough to allow for these regions to be filled first. Dragon’s neck, the smoke, and the rest of the figure follow, leaving a few black, dark blue, and dark leafy regions to complete the puzzle. Overall, as with most 550+piece  Ceaco puzzles, the differing shapes of large pieces makes this puzzle easy to complete.

Dragon: A dragon is a mythological representation of a reptile. In antiquity, dragons were mostly envisaged as serpents, but since the Middle Ages, it has become common to depict them with legs, resembling a lizard.

Dragons are usually shown in modern times with a body like a huge lizard, or a snake with two pairs of lizard-type legs, and able to emit fire from their mouths. The European dragon has bat-like wings growing from its back. A dragon-like creature with wings but only a single pair of legs is known as a wyvern. [Wiki]

Puzzle: The 60s


Size: 750 pieces
Dimensions: 48.1cm x 68cm
Producer: Kodak, RoseArt, Decades series, No.21020
Puzzle: Enough different colours and textures to make the completion of this puzzle a breeze. Yellow cup and flowers, purple and white fabric, lava lamp, white fabric with red embroidery, the photograph, the straw hat are all sufficiently different to be easily assembled first, guiding the rest of the puzzle to completion.

The 60’s: The counterculture movement dominated the second half of the 1960s, its most famous moments being the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967, and the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York in 1969. Psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, were widely used medicinally, spiritually and recreationally throughout the late 1960s, and were popularized by Timothy Leary with his slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out”. There was a growing interest in Eastern religions and philosophy, and many attempts were made to found communes, which varied from supporting free love to religious puritanism. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Top of the Rock – Lunchtime on a crossbeam


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 48.3cm x 35.5cm
Producer: Top of the Rock, design by SBH Marketing, Inc., 2006, #1310302
Puzzle: Despite being black-and-white, this puzzle is easy to do: grey hazy sky is of a shade sufficiently different from the buildings below, people on the crossbeam are darker than the background, and their shoes provide enough of a contrast with the skyscrapers to guide the completion of the bottom part.

Photo: An historic picture now in a great puzzle! The Top of the Rock Observation Deck opened to the public in the summer of 1933 with its unparalleled views of New York City. The amazing craftsmanship of the Observation Deck is owed to these brave construction workers who routinely ate their lunches 800 heart-stopping feet above the city below. [Puzzle box]

Puzzle: Early summer produce


Size: 500 pieces, 1 missing
Dimensions: 35.24cm x 50.48cm
Producer: MB Puzzle, Croxley series, 1997, #4611-22
Puzzle: Pleasant puzzle, preferably done with good lighting. Lots of green, grey, and brown, but easy enough to assemble. Several bright regions (strawberries, onions, window, and walls) as well as the horizontal and vertical surfaces lay a good foundation to guide the completion of the puzzle.

Produce: Produce is a generalized term for a group of farm-produced crops and goods, and is not limited to fruits and vegetables (i.e. meats, grains, oats, etc. are sometimes considered as produce.) More specifically, the term “produce” often implies that the products are fresh and generally in the same state as where they were harvested. Produce is the main product sold by greengrocers, farmers’ markets, and fruit markets. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Verticalville

Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 69.85cm x 54.61cm
Producer: Hallmark, 1977
Notes:
Verticalville

There’s a town west of someplace and south of some other,
That isn’t like anyplace else anywhere.
It didn’t grow outward like all other cities;
It rose like a mountain straight up in the air.

The blocks of most towns lie beside one another,
And to get “there” from “here” you just go across town,
But this is a place where the blocks stack like pancakes,
Where uptown is up, and where downtown is down!

It has its own railroad that spirals up through it,
A Penny Arcade where the kids test their skill,
A bank for high finance, a pool for high diving,
They’re tops with the people in Verticalville.

The mayor, Mr. Height’s, running for re-election,
On a platform that calls for more vertical blocks,
Continued high spirits and low unemployment,
And a new baseball park for the Vertical Sox!

There’s a plane flying ’round saying, “Don’t eat at Joe’s,”
Which was rented, of course, by the owner of Bill’s.
And Bruce the Balloonist is ready to lift off
To give all the people some vertical thrills.

If you come to this town, you don’t need a compass;
It takes an altimeter to fill the bill.
But spirits are high and the living is lofty.
The folks live it up, up in Verticalville.

[Puzzle box]

Puzzle: Da Vinci’s World


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 48cm x 68cm
Producer: Educa, Art Collection series, 13050
Artist: Leonardo Da Vinci
Notes: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of “unquenchable curiosity” and “feverishly inventive imagination”.

According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and “his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote”. Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Chateau Chenonceaux, France


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 69.85cm x 54.61cm
Producer: Golden, Guild Puzzle, Tony Craddock / Tony Stone, ISBN: 0-307-04710-5
Notes: The Chateau de Chenonceau is a manor house near the small village of Chenonceaux, in the Indre-et-Loire departement of the Loire Valley in France. It was built on the site of an old mill on the River Cher, sometime before its first mention in writing in the 11th century. The current manor was designed by the French Renaissance architect Philibert Delorme.

An architectural mixture of late Gothic and early Renaissance, Chateau de Chenonceau and its gardens are open to the public. Other than the Royal Palace of Versailles, Chenonceau is the most visited chateau in France. [Wiki]

Puzzle: La Roche Courbon Castle, France


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 51.12cm x 66.52cm
Producer: Big Ben, MB Puzzles, Hasbro, 2007

Notes: Chateau de la Roche Courbon is a large chateau, developed from an earlier castle, in the Charente-Maritime departement of France. It is in the commune of Saint-Porchaire between Saintes and Rochefort.

A castle was built around 1475 by Jehan de Latour, on site which had been inhabited since prehistoric times. In the 17th century, the Courbon family, which had occupied the castle for two centuries, transformed it into a more comfortable residence. More alterations were made in the 18th century, but it was eventually sold in 1817 and then abandoned. It was purchased in 1920 by Paul Chenereau, who restored the chateau and its gardens. The chateau is still owned and inhabited by his descendants.

The gardens include orchard, flower garden, geometrical flower beds and lawns surrounding a small lake (‘mirror pool’). The River Bruant flows through the gardens, feeding the water features. Beyond that, an ornamental staircase leads to higher ground, on the far side of the river. [Wiki]

Puzzle: European Montage by Jim Zuckerman

European Montage, med
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.5cm
Producer: Sure-Lox
Artist: Jim Zuckerman
Notes: Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not use film, is realized today through image-editing software. [Wiki]

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Puzzle: Fairy Dance


Size: 550 pieces
Dimensions: 60.96cm x 45.72cm
Producer:  Ceaco, Meiklejohn Graphics, 2003, #2333-14

Notes: The folklores of the British Isles contain a wealth of fairy lore, including the idea from which fairy rings take their name: the phenomena result from the dancing of fairies. In 19th-century Wales, fairies were almost invariably described as dancing in a group when encountered, and in Scotland and Wales in the late 20th century, stories about fairy rings were still common; some Welsh even claimed to have joined a fairy dance. Victorian folklorists regarded fairies and witches as related, based in part on the idea that both were believed to dance in circles. These revels are particularly associated with moonlit nights, the rings only becoming visible to mortals the following morning. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Peacock Daze by Josephine Wall


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 33.02cm x 48.26cm
Producer:  Mega Brands America, 2008, #50884
Artist: Josephine Wall

Notes:  Deep in the heart of a rose filled garden, overpowered by an intoxicating perfume, a maiden is transported into a world of daydreams. As she drifts into a trance like state, she imagines herself adorned with peacocks and exotic flowers. She enjoys her fleeting moments of escapism. [Josephine Wall’s site]

Puzzle: Heart and Soul by Josephine Wall


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 33.02cm x 48.26cm
Producer:  Mega Brands America, 2008, #50884
Artist: Josephine Wall

Notes:  The butterfly maiden looks inquiringly up at the heavens, soul-searching as she watches the clouds form layer upon layer of strange and wonderful lands.Beneath her multicoloured, gossamer headdress beats the heart of a lion offering strength to the gentle souls in flight.A swirl of flowers forming a garland around the “Queen of the Jungle”, gradually blends into sea and stars.This transitional plane is the meeting place between the butterfly’s ethereal and gentle world and the lion’s proud and powerful domain. The outcome of this meeting is a perfect blend for life. [Josephine Wall’s site]

Puzzle: Hôtel de Ville, Paris, France


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 80.65cm x 56.2cm
Producer:  The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, It’s Framed series, 2004, #80630

Notes: The Hotel de Ville in Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris’s administration.

In July 1357, Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants (i.e. mayor) of Paris, bought the so-called maison aux piliers (“House of Pillars”) in the name of the municipality on the gently sloping shingle beach which served as a river port for unloading wheat and wood and later merged into a square, the Place de Greve, a place where Parisians often gathered, particularly for public executions. Ever since 1357, the City of Paris’s administration has been located on the same location where the Hotel de Ville stands today. Before 1357, the city administration was located in the so-called parloir aux bourgeois near the Chatelet.

Since the French Revolution, the building has been the scene of a number of historical events, notably the proclamation of the French Third Republic in 1870 and the famous speech by Charles de Gaulle on 25 August 1944 during the Liberation of Paris when he greeted the crowd from a front window. [Wiki]