Month: February 2025

Artist: unknown
Made by: Aimpuzzle
Count: 148 pieces
Final size: 12 x 11″
Piece Type/Variety: Random, very high variety
Piece quality: Good
Skin irritation: None

I liked this wooden puzzle quite a bit more than the giraffe by the same company. I think because the color scheme is nicer, even though still crazy wild fantasy design. No goat ever sported fur in such pinks, purples, blues and greens. And in spite of the pastel color hues, this one looks rather sinister to me, my brain kept reading these yellow shapes on the chin as irregular fangs.

It has fourteen whimsy pieces- a big cat, the company logo, a dog (?), butterfly, two sea turtles, a rabbit, elephant, sheep, otter, anchor, lizard, dagger and one more animal I can’t identify.

Not sure if this is considered the small or medium size- if you look up this puzzle on their site, the small has 120 pieces and the large, 180. I counted mine three times- it’s right in the middle. Maybe I have an older one and they changed the piece cut? That’s what I’m guessing. I don’t have the box, so I took a picture from online to show top of post. And noticed the colored pattern is slightly different.

Some very thin shapes in the pieces, but seem sturdy enough.

Reverse:

This is the last wooden puzzle in my collection, for now. Assembly:

from my grandmother

Artist: unknown
Made by: Hartmaze
Count: 253 pieces
Final size: 11.5″ diameter
Piece Type/Variety: Random, very high variety
Piece quality: Excellent
Skin irritation: Very minor

I can’t believe I found this nice wooden puzzle secondhand. It has a lovely scent of fresh wood, the picture is very bright, and the pieces are a nice sturdy thickness (made of three layers).

I looked up the painting online to try and find out who the original artist is, no luck there. Definitely a Chinese work of art, it’s from a fable. There’s lots of other images depicting the phoenix with a hundred birds. I tried to count them on my puzzle, got up to eighty but realized I missed a few as when I went to take closeup photos I saw more that were very small in the background. All that bold red makes it very hard to see some things. All the other images I found online were of other people showing off this puzzle. That’s how I found that some of them got a better picture guide. Mine’s rather small, as shown below. I had to actually use a loop to see where some of the birds were in the picture.

The image on the box is even smaller (that’s my thumb!)

However the other side of the insert has a map of all the piece shapes, this is more decent size. I don’t know if I’d ever use this to solve it (but then, I never imagined I’d find a use for lettering guides, so maybe someday, who knows). I was a bit annoyed to see that when some people showed their puzzle online, their picture guide was the size of my piece map. Would have been a lot more useful.

Just have to share some details, as I tried to recognize the bird species. There’s a peacock-

Two cranes-

A pair of geese and a rooster (his red body and orange beak blend into the background)

A penguin, an owl-

A kingfisher and a small toucan (it’s just above the phoenix to the right, between its body and wing)

What I think is a cockatoo, and a hoopoe-

This one looks like an cattle egret (but I think it’s probably not), and some kind of shorebird-

I think this is a bird of prey-

and these make me think of magpies, though they’re probably something else-

You can tell from those details above, there were quite a few pieces had the picture layer chipping off the corners. No puzzle dust per se, but a scattering of color flecks left behind on my board. I don’t know how much use this puzzle had before coming to me, but with more re-workings it seems the picture will start to wear off at the edges. There are no whimsy pieces, but I didn’t miss them. The quirky, intricate shapes were plenty challenging.

If I work it again, I think I’ll do it on this black board. It stands out so much better. (In my next-to-the-last progress photo, there are still 12 piece gaps, but it’s hard to tell).

Finally, the assembly:

a thrift store find

Cat

Artist: unknown
Made in China
Count: 71 pieces
Final size: 5 x 8.5″
Piece Type/Variety: Random, very high variety
Piece quality: Average
Skin irritation: None

Rainbow colors on a decoratively patterned animal, so typical of these wooden puzzles. Still fun to do. I had this one on my lap at night, lamp caused odd shadows which I tried to correct using photoshop (you may see some artifacts of that). And the colors are kind of dull on the puzzle, that made it hard to get good pictures, too. I pushed the brightness some. The included ‘poster’ in this case is bigger than the actual puzzle, also brighter and more crisp. Quite a lot of the detail on the actual puzzle is dim and blurred, not easy to see clearly.

The whimsy shapes included fox, rabbit and cats (apologies this photo came out blurry)

four different octopuses, fish, dolphin and whale, a ghost (?), seahorse and crab. Why so many ocean creatures I don’t know. I like it better when the whimsy shapes are on a similar theme to the puzzle.

I didn’t notice until I flipped it over upon completion, that this one has the same type of regularly spaced whimsies and curly-hooked connection pieces as the Thanksgiving Puppy. I’ve heard tell that lots of these cheap wooden puzzles made in China are actually all produced by one company, then sold under different names/labels. I guess this proves that.


Smallest knob ever on this one. Also note that there’s something strange about this cat’s toes. And what’s that little blob under the end of the tail? I don’t know.

from local swap group

by C.S. Lewis

It was good to read this one again. I don’t think I’d opened a copy of it since my teen years. It was never among my favorites of the Narnia books, perhaps because there’s so much battle stuff going on. Although less than I had remembered. Warning for some SPOILERS if you haven’t read this yet.

So- the four main characters, children in England just on their way off to boarding school, get suddenly pulled back into the magical world of Narnia. It turns out they were summoned, but they don’t know why at first, or by whom. They find themselves in a castle ruin in a tangled forest. They free a dwarf who was supposed to get executed, and from him learn that a thousand years have passed since they were last in Narnia- and much has changed. Narnia has for a long time now been ruled by an outsider nation of Men, the Telmarines. Young Caspian is next in line to be king, but suddenly learns from his tutor, that his uncle plans to kill him and rule instead. So Caspian flees and gathers supporters- from the Old Narnians, the ones whose country was taken over. The talking animals, centaurs, giants, fauns, etc. Even walking, talking trees. A lot of the current people don’t believe these creatures still exist, they’ve been living so long in hiding. Much less do they believe in the stories of Aslan the Lion. In fact a lot of the story is about who believes or doubts- when the four children are tromping through the woods with the dwarf to try and meet up with Caspian’s forces, Lucy suddenly sees Aslan at a distance on a hill, and feels sure he is beckoning them to go that way. After some argument, it turns out that nobody believes her, so they go the original path, and it all goes wrong. Difficult and puts them in danger. They have to backtrack and take Lucy’s suggestion after all. When they do meet up with Caspian, they overhear his followers arguing too- some of them believe Aslan will return to save them (they have no hope of winning against the uncle’s larger army), others think they should summon the White Witch out of the past, or call on other evil creatures for support. Among the four children too, they are often questioning each other’s abilities. In the end, Peter the oldest steps up to fight Miraz in singlehanded combat, but when he fells the older knight, the enemies all jump forward to attack. Then Aslan shows up with the trees behind him. So they are saved by him, but only after they had done their utmost themselves, and come together in a unified front (and expressed belief in the Lion). Everyone comes around to this, even the sour dwarf who was reluctant and critical all along.

I think it is the characters who make this story come alive for me. How the four siblings talk amongst themselves, their arguments about faith or not, the bickering about where to go, all feel so realistic. And the little gritty details about their stay in Narnia- it’s not at all easy. They don’t have any supplies when they land in the forest- for quite a while they’re eating nothing but apples and the occasional fish. The walks are long and hard and everyone is tired and argues more because of it, and some of them are petty and unpleasant to each other. They get muddy and trip on things and so on. But it all turns out right in the end, and there are other parts so lovely it’s hard to comprehend the descriptions of the scenes (or they are just not described very clearly to me). Lucy and Susan dancing with the talking trees and the Maenads (I had to look up what those figures actually were, the author was rather subtle about it in this book!), riding on Aslan’s back once again, re-visiting places they had loved and seeing how much has changed. They succeed in their mission to put Caspian back on the throne, and then after seeing most of the invading peoples out of Narnia, are sent by Aslan through a magical doorway and tumble back into the railway station to go to school.

Just the right way to end an adventure, ha.

There were some little things I had completely forgotten, or glossed over when I was a kid- like the fact that apparently the Telmarines are descended from pirates that accidentally found their way into Narnia hundreds of years ago themselves? I had no recollection of this! Makes me more interested to keep reading the series, see what else I notice so differently reading them as an adult. (A lot of people point out the dearth of female characters, how little the children actually do to help Caspian, and annoying references to Christian theology via Aslan, but none of that bothered me still).

Rating: 3/5
186 pages, 1951

Artist: unknown
Maker: Quordle Puzzles
Count: 80 pieces
Final size: 9 x 9″
Piece Type/Variety: Random, very high variety
Piece quality: Average
Skin irritation: None

I always had my doubts about this puzzle brand. It was decent as far as wooden puzzles go. The pieces are an okay thickness, but some of the interlocking shapes quite small! If it got much smaller, I’d be afraid of many breaking when taking apart/ re-assembling this puzzle.

The whimsy pieces are fun- including flowers, leaves and foxes (quite a lot of muted browns in the image, so I didn’t have some of these actually flipped to the reverse)

one unicorn, rabbits, cute kittens and puppy, teddy bears,

birds, a chicken and owl, elephants, I think that’s a hedgehog, and a triceratops!

It was a pretty quick puzzle to do. A lot of the placement was obvious because most of the interior pieces seemed to have an edge of a whimsy shape on them- I started thinking: this puzzle is all whimsies with the random pieces in between them and those curvy bits to interlock. Reverse side: I was pretty much right. The whimsies are very evenly spaced across the whole puzzle.


There’s a picture guide insert in the box, but it’s exactly the same size as the image on the box, so I don’t know what the point of that was.

a thrift store find

by E.D. Baker

This is the first book of the series that includes A Prince Among Frogs. Which I read out of order, so now I am remedying that. It was a fun read. Similar in theme to Frogged. Princess Emeralda doesn’t want to meet the prince her parents are trying to introduce her to (arranging a future marriage) so she sneaks out of the castle and goes to her favorite spot- the swamp behind the castle. Where she meets a frog who demands a kiss, saying he’s really a prince. Emma is reluctant, but finally gets talked into kissing the frog- and is turned into one herself. Said prince is still a frog, too. They can’t imagine why the reversal didn’t work how it was supposed to, and the only way to find out is to locate a witch. Preferably the one who transformed this prince Eadric in the first place. Getting anywhere is difficult, being frogs they are in constant danger from predators, curious or mean boys, dogs, and any larger animal or human just walking around. Emma has to learn how to hop and swim and (ugh!) eat insects. She is constantly pestered by this Eadric to kiss him again, but refuses, worried that it will work some other transformation. They journey to find the witch, only encounter a different witch instead, who wants to use their frog body parts for a spell. They’re trapped with a bunch of other creatures in her cottage and with some help from a bat, finally get free again. Emma discovers that she actually has a knack for magic, and can be braver than she ever thought. Eventually they make their way back to Emma’s castle, to seek help from her aunt who is also a witch. (So I found out- yes, this fantasy world has plenty of witches, and the magic runs in families, including Emma’s). There’s lots of funny asides, like the dog who was once accidentally turned into a duck and is now (being a dog again) mortally afraid of them. There’s also a horse that got turned into a dog, and an otter that was once a man (seems witches enjoy turning anyone who annoys them into animals), and a nasty-tempered fairy. Emma and Eadric slowly build a friendship as they go through their trials as frogs, and at the end it looks like this might even turn into a romance someday.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5
214 pages, 2002

Artist: Lesley Anne Ivory
Maker and Year: Ceaco, 2010
Count: 300 pieces
Final size: 11 x 15″
Piece Type/Variety: ribbon cut, average
Piece quality: average
Skin irritation: very mild

I liked this one a lot, too. It’s just as busy with the flowers as Motley, but with all the colors it was easier to do. Relaxing.

It did have even more puzzle dust, though! And that’s after someone else has done these puzzles at least once- all the bags in the set were opened and re-sealed. There was a lot of dust all over the board I spread the pieces out on. And when I crumbled up the puzzle to put away again, another little heap of dust produced. So the pieces are still shedding.

From the Ivory Cats boxed set.

a thrift store find

A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism

by Naoki Higashida

I have this book on my e-reader, and started it during the winter vacation. That’s how long it’s taken me to read it. The chapters are very short, just a page or two each, but they are quite abstract, dealing with the author’s thoughts and thought process more than anything else. I don’t know why that made it hard to focus on. Perhaps because it’s not a story per se, no narrative arc to follow, but instead a description of what this young man’s life is like, how he perceives and thinks about things. A lot about what he wishes neurotypical people could understand about those living with autism. He explains as best he can the reasons behind his behavior, what causes meltdowns, why he gets stuck on certain phrases, has trouble connecting ideas, makes sounds he doesn’t want to, and so on. A lot of things it seems are involuntary or difficult for him to control, but he implores people to not give up on coaching autistic people in their lives to continue practicing skills and learning new things. For him it takes many many repetitions to get better at something. He expresses a lot of love for his family treats him, how normal they treat him and how much patience they have. He tells about how he feels frustrated with certain phrases and aphorisms that teachers and people in public use towards him. Most of all, the book is astonishing in how eloquent and expressive it is- nobody knew this kid could think so clearly until he learned to write with a device. I wish I could have processed this one better, but I think I will read it again in future.

Same author as The Reason I Jump. This book is not just his musings and explanations of things, but also includes some of his poetry and one short story.

Rating: 3/5
240 pages, 2017

Artist: Lesley Anne Ivory
Maker and Year: Ceaco, 2010
Count: 300 pieces
Final size: 11 x 15″
Piece Type/Variety: Ribbon cut, average
Piece quality: Average
Skin irritation: Mild

I liked this one. It required slow, methodical focus, there being only two color areas- the dark tortie cat and the yellow/green of the flower field. I expected it to be harder than it was, and found it enjoyable. Just a little bit of finger pain, which I mostly ignored. It’s a bit above average with the piece cut- the ordinary number of knob/indent varieties, but some “arms” with quirky shapes and such, which made it fun, and a little easier to eyeball the piece fits.

I did notice there was quite a bit of puzzle dust with this one. I keep wondering why this Ceaco set is lower in quality than the National Parks one- maybe just because it’s a decade older? I’ll have to pay attention, if I get another newer-made Ceaco puzzle, does it feel like the National Parks set. (If not, I assume that one was made special quality for a gift shop or something).

From the Ivory Cats boxed set.

a thrift store find

Artist: Lesley Anne Ivory
Maker and Year: Ceaco, 2010
Count: 300 pieces
Final size: 15 x 11″
Piece Type/Variety: Ribbon cut, average
Piece quality: Average
Skin irritation: None

I didn’t care for this picture much. Sure, it’s cute kittens posing adorably in the middle of some mischief, but they’re a small part of the picture, so it’s hard to see their faces.

From the Ivory Cats boxed set.

A lot of the picture is orange things. Orange striped carpet. Very orange wooden dresser and chair, which seem to dominate the image. And orange is one of my least favorite colors. That’s all. I did like the patchwork quilt, and that the chair seat is also patchwork. That chair gave me quite a bit of trouble! Tricky, putting the curved shapes of its back together.

A little surprise near the end: this puzzle had one duplicate piece. I think it’s only the second time I’ve had this happen. Mayb I’ll start collecting them (instead of leaving in the box for the next person). Might be interesting how many random pieces that were superfluous to their puzzles, I gather years down the road in my puzzling journey. Not sure what I’d ever do with them, though. Some kind of art project? (The first pair I turned into earrings, but I’ve never worn them).

Assembly:

a thrift store find

DISCLAIMER:

All books reviewed on this site are owned by me, or borrowed from the public library. Exceptions are a very occasional review copy sent to me by a publisher or author, as noted. Receiving a book does not influence my opinion or evaluation of it

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