Puzzles

Puzzle: Connecticut River, U.S.A.


Size: 1000 pieces
Producer:  MB Puzzle
Notes: The Connecticut River is the largest river in New England, flowing south from the Connecticut Lakes in northern New Hampshire, along the border between New Hampshire and Vermont, through western Massachusetts and central Connecticut discharging into Long Island Sound at Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, Connecticut.

The river’s name is the French corruption of the Algonquian word “quinetucket” and means long tidal river. The first European to see the river was the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block  in 1614. As a result of this exploration, the Dutch named the Connecticut River the “Fresh River”, and it was the northeastern locus of the New Netherland colony. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Three Graces, by Josephine Wall


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 33.02cm x 48.26cm
Producer:  Rose Art, Jewel Scapes series
Artist: Josephine Wall is an English born artist who currently resides in the seaside community of Dorset, England. She specializes in mystical, surreal-like, fantasy paintings. [Bio on Josephine Wall site]

Notes: Three inseparable sisters – daughters of Zeus, representing all that is noble, beautiful and pure, keep watch from above. Aglaia (brightness) symbolised by brightly coloured butterflies, Euphrosyne (joyfulness) symbolised by the joyful sound of birdsong, and Thalia (bloom) symbolised by a headdress of flowers.

Above all they were goddesses, noble of grace, and a beauty which enchants. Their hair and faces shine with radiant beauty, looking down from Mount Olympus. [Josephine Wall UK site]

Puzzle: Venice Carnival


Size: 750 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.57cm
Producer:  Sure-Lox
Notes: The Carnival of Venice (Italian: Carnevale di Venezia) is an annual festival, held in Venice, Italy. The Carnival starts around two weeks before Ash Wednesday and ends on Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras), the day before Ash Wednesday. Carnival started as a time for celebration and expression throughout the classes, as wearing masks hid any form of identity between social classes.

Masks have always been a central feature of the Venetian carnival; traditionally people were allowed to wear them between the festival of Santo Stefano (St. Stephen’s Day, December 26) and the start of the carnival season and midnight of Shrove Tuesday. They have always been around Venice. As masks were also allowed Ascension and from October 5 to Christmas, people could spend a large proportion of the year in disguise. Maskmakers (mascherari) enjoyed a special position in society, with their own laws and their own guild.

Venetian masks can be made in leather or with the original glass technique. The original masks were rather simple in design and decoration and often had a symbolic and practical function. Nowadays, most of them are made with the application of gesso and gold leaf and are all hand-painted using natural feathers and gems to decorate. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Alphabet of Thorn, by Kinuko Craft


Size: 1000 pieces
Producer:  Master Pieces
Artist: Kinuko Craft – Japanese-born American contemporary painter, illustrator and fantasy artist.  Craft came to the United States in 1964 where she continues to live and work today. Her art has included paintings for the book covers of many well known fantasy authors such as Patricia A. McKillip, Juliet Marillier, Tanith Lee  and many others. She has also designed opera posters, fairy tale books and painted cover art for many national magazines such as Time, Newsweek and The National Geographic. [Wiki]
Notes: Alphabet of Thorn is a 2004 fantasy novel by Patricia A. McKillip. It was nominated for the 2005 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Moonlight Calm by Anthony Casay


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 35cm x 48cm
Artist: Anthony Casay has been described as one of the world’s most creative contemporary painters today. It has been said that the “ocean dances” at the tip of his brush, and that the sun pulsates from his canvas. Casay depicts the colors, fragrances and shapes of the sea; its waters in turmoil–providing a spectacle of rare excitement. Each Casay wave has a personality of its own as it crests, breaks and swirls into a flood of white foam. His paintings explore some of the choicest treasures of natures’ coastal ocean cliffs, rocky shorelines and stormy coves. [Bio at AEJV site]
Producer:  Canada Games

Puzzle: Spring Concerto


Size: 500 pieces, 2 missing
Dimensions: 45.72cm x 35.56cm
Photographer: Dietrich Leis
Producer:  E&L Corporation
Notes: Dianne Dietrich Leis, photographing professionally since 1977, began her career running the family commercial studio in Phoenix. In that capacity she did weddings, portraits, and commercial assignments. She continues the family tradition of landscape and travel photography. Her photo shoots in Europe, Mexico, and Costa Rica have broadened the scope of the collection. In addition, Dianne enjoys still life photography and contributes to several craft and interior design books. [Bio at Dietrich Leis Photo site]

Puzzle: The Love Song by Norman Rockwell


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.57cm
Painting: photo
Producer:  Sure-Lox
Box: photo
Artist: Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) – a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States, where Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. [Wiki]
Notes: Norman Rockwell’s Love Song, which was reproduced as an illustration in the December 1926 issue of Ladies Home Journal, presents one of this popular artist’s major themes: youth contrasted with old age. A young girl listens wistfully as two elderly men play the flute and the clarinet. Leaning against the metronome is a music sheet indicating the tune’s-and the painting’s-title, “The Love Song.” Rockwell, an avid collector of antique maps, added an old map to the scene, enhancing its quaint setting. [Indianapolis Museum of Art site]

Puzzle: The Collector


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 69cm x 51cm
Artist: James C. Christensen (born September 26, 1942) is an American artist. His main body of work, mostly paintings, is heavily influenced by fantasy themes. Even his small body of religious work shows heavy fantasy influence. Christensen says his inspirations are myths, fables, fantasies, and tales of imagination. [Wiki]
Producer:  Ceaco, The Greenwich Workshop – North America’s leading fine art publisher specializing in the burgeoning medium of visual entertainment. Founded in 1972, the company’s principal products are Fine Art Edition prints and gicleé canvases―which are collectible, fine-quality reproductions of original paintings by the most sought-after, most collected group of artists painting today. [The Greenwich Workshop site]
Notes: There are at least 26 objects within the puzzle that start with each letter of the alphabet. Can you find all of them? [puzzle box]

Puzzle: Sauvignon Grapes, Napa Valley


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.57cm
Producer:  Sure-Lox, Puzzlers Collection series
Notes: Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world’s most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canada’s Okanagan Valley to Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon became internationally recognized through its prominence in Bordeaux wines where it is often blended with Merlot and Cabernet Franc. From France, the grape spread across Europe and to the New World where it found new homes in places like California’s Napa Valley, Australia’s Coonawarra region and Chile’s Maipo Valley. For most of the 20th century, it was the world’s most widely planted premium red wine grape until it was surpassed by Merlot in the 1990s.  [Wiki]

Napa County is a county located north of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. The word napa is of Native American derivation. Of the many explanations of the name’s origin, the most plausible seems to be that it is derived from the Patwin word “napo” meaning “house”, although local residents will often cite an urban legend that gives the translation as “you will always return”. [Wiki]

Puzzle: The Dolomites, Italy


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 51.12cm x 66.52cm
Producer:  Hasbro, Milton Bradley puzzles, Big Ben
Notes: The Dolomites are a mountain range in the Alps. They are located for the most part in the province of Belluno, the rest in the provinces of Bolzano-Bozen and Trento (all in north-eastern Italy).

The name “Dolomites” is derived from the famous French mineralogist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu who was the first to describe the rock, dolomite, a type of carbonate rock  which is responsible for the characteristic shapes and colour of these mountains; previously they were called the “pale mountains,” and it was only in the early 19th century that the name was Gallicized. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Taste of Tuscany, Italian Lakes


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 48.26cm x 35.56cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, Taste of Tuscany series
Box: photo
Notes: Tuscany (Italian: Toscana) is a region in Central Italy. The regional capital is Florence.

The most famous lakes in Italy are in what is sometimes called the Italian Lake District, in the north of the country not far from the Alps. That anglicised description is evocative of the area’s poetic and literary connections. Beloved of the romantic poets as well as later writers, statesmen and royalty, the northern Italian lakes are beautiful and atmospheric, where mountains descend to meet the lakeshore, and stately grand hotels dominate pretty lakeside towns. [Italy Heaven site]

Puzzle: Paulding, Michigan, U.S.A.


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 51.12cm x 66.52cm
Producer:  Hasbro, Milton Bradley puzzles, Big Ben
Notes: Surrounded by Ottawa National Forest land today, Paulding was once a busy sawmill town surrounded by logging activity. It still has a general store, a tavern, and a few other businesses and houses. Fishing and hunting are major pursuits today. [The Enchanted Forest site]

Puzzle: Taste of Tuscany, Café Barocco


Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 48.26cm x 35.56cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, Taste of Tuscany series
Box: photo
Notes: Tuscany (Italian: Toscana) is a region in Central Italy. The regional capital is Florence.

Tuscany is known for its beautiful landscapes, its rich artistic legacy and vast influence on high culture. Tuscany is widely regarded as the true birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, and has been home to some of the most influential people in the history of arts and science, such as Petrarch, Dante, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Amerigo Vespucci and Puccini. Tuscany has a unique culinary tradition, and is famous for its wines (most famous of which are Chianti, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Morellino di Scansano and Brunello di Montalcino). Most of the frescos, sculptures and paintings in Tuscany are also held in the region’s abundant churches and cathedrals, such as Florence Cathedral, Siena Cathedral, Pisa Cathedral and the Collegiata di San Gimignano. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Beech Walk Road


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.57cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, Country Roads series
Notes: Beech is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia and North America.

Beech wood is an excellent firewood. Some drums are made from beech, which has a tone generally considered to be between maple and birch, the two most popular drum woods. Also, beech pulp is used as the basis for manufacturing a textile fibre known as Modal. The wood is also used to make the pigment known as bistre.

Beech was a common writing material in Germanic societies before the development of paper. The Old English bōc and Old Norse bók have the primary sense of beech, but a secondary sense of book, and it is from bōc that the modern word derives. In modern day German, this connection is even more apparent, with the word for “book” being “das Buch” and “Buche” for beech tree. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Lupine Lined Road


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.57cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, Country Roads series
Notes: Lupins or lupines (North America) are the members of the genus Lupinus in the legume family (Fabaceae). The genus comprises between 200 and 600 species, with major centers of diversity in South and western North America, and in the Mediterranean region and Africa.

The yellow legume seeds of lupins, commonly called lupin beans, were popular with the Romans, who spread the plant’s cultivation throughout the Roman Empire. The name ‘Lupin’ derives from the Latin word ‘lupinus’ (meaning wolf), and was given with regard to the fact that many found that the plant has a tendency to ravage the land on which it grows. The peas, which appear after the flowering period were also said to be fit only for the consumption of wolves. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Morton Arboretum Road


Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.57cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox, Country Roads series
Location site: http://www.mortonarb.org/
Location: The Morton Arboretum, in Lisle, Illinois, covers 6.9 square kilometres and is made up of gardens of various plant types and collections of trees from specific taxonomical and geographical areas. It includes native woodlands and a restored Illinois prairie. The Arboretum has over 4,100 different species of trees, shrubs and other woody plants from around the globe. In all, there are over 186,000 catalogued plants. The Arboretum has 26 km of hiking trails and 14 km of roadways for driving/bicycling.

The arboretum was established on 14 December 1922 by Joy Morton, founder of the Morton Salt Company. Joy Morton’s Thornhill Estate, established in 1910, formed the basis of the Arboretum’s original area. Mr. Morton’s father Julius Sterling Morton was the founder of Arbor Day. [Wiki]

Puzzle: Monaco


Size: 500 pieces,  1 missing
Dimensions: 45cm x 35cm
Producer: Leap Year
Location: Monaco or Monte Carlo, officially the Principality of Monaco, is a small sovereign city-state located in South Western Europe on the northern central coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is surrounded on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about 16 km from Italy.

Monaco is the name of the country and its capital (and only) city. It is famous as a tax haven, and wealthy foreigners make up the majority of the population at approximately 84%. [Wiki]