Tagged With: Puzzle

Puzzle: Van Gogh’s ‘Cafe Terrace at Night’

Photograph taken on Thursday, November 14, 2024 by Henry
Puzzle: Van Gogh's ‘Cafe Terrace at Night’

Puzzle: Van Gogh’s ‘Cafe Terrace at Night’

Our latest puzzle is one of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Cafe Terrace at Night’, a wonderful painting and a challenging puzzle. It was easier than some we’ve done but hard enough to occupy us for a while. Cathy was worried that we didn’t have any more after this but her birthday’s coming up so she’ll be fine in a few days.

We were at a friend’s house and he has a board that he made for puzzles that has a slight rim all the way around the edge, which is a good idea. Then he has another board that he can set on that so the table can be used as a table even if the puzzle isn’t finished. We have a card table with a 4′ by 4′ piece of MDF that works well, although the idea of adding a edge pieces is a good one. Maybe I’ll add that to ours. We have, on occasion, lost pieces off the edge of the board and they are sometimes hard to spot on the carpet.

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Iceland Puzzle

Photograph taken on Saturday, December 21, 2024 by Henry
Iceland Puzzle

Iceland Puzzle

We finished another puzzle in the last few days. This one wasn’t as difficult as some we’ve done, but of course they’re all challenging at some level. The sky, not surprisingly, was the hardest part of this one but the clouds certainly helped a lot. We don’t have any more on deck to do at this point, but don’t be surprised if someone gets one or two for Christmas. The mountain in this photo is called Kirkjufell (Church Mountain) and the waterfall is named Kirkjufellsfoss for the mountain behind it. It’s in western Iceland just west of the town of Grundarfjörður.

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Monet Water Lilies Puzzle

Photograph taken on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 by Henry
Monet Water Lilies Puzzle

Monet Water Lilies Puzzle

We finished this puzzle yesterday with help from Dorothy who came to spend the night after a day painting murals in Bethesda (with more to be done tomorrow). I don’t know if this is the hardest puzzle we’ve ever done but it’s certainly up there. As you can see, there are a few ares of pink but the blues and greens predominate and are scattered pretty widely throughout the image. Once we got the border done, we worked from the bottom up until we had about a third done. after that it got even harder, but eventually we got it done.

One other change on the puzzle front is that I added a rim to our puzzle table, which is a 4×4 foot sheet of MDF. I glued some molding material to the top along each edge. This helps prevent pieces from being pushed off the edge to be lost on the floor. It isn’t perfect, or foolproof, but it’s an improvement. Thanks to our friend Dave H. for the inspiration.

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Christmas Puzzle

Photograph taken on Tuesday, January 21, 2025 by Henry
Christmas Puzzle

Christmas Puzzle

One of my mom’s friends (whom I’ve known basically all my life) offered to give us a stack of puzzles. And by stack, I mean 35 or 40 of them. They are mostly 500 piece puzzles, which are a little easier then the 1,000 piece puzzles we normally do, but that’s not a problem. This is the first of those that we’ve done. In addition to the somewhat larger piece size, this one also had more unusual piece shapes, which for me makes a puzzle that much easier, because I look for pieces as much by shape as by the picture.

As you may or may not know, our family has this thing where we don’t look at the picture while we’re doing a puzzle. That makes it a little more challenging but it also gives us that much more satisfaction when we finish it.

This puzzle was missing a piece, as you can see about a third of the way up from the bottom a few ‘columns’ in from the left.

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Library Puzzle

Photograph taken on Monday, February 24, 2025 by Henry
Library Puzzle

Library Puzzle

Cathy brother Jim gave us this puzzle for ‘Second Christmas’ and we finished it yesterday. For a while we thought there was a piece missing but happily it turned up, having disguised itself on the rug under the table. This was a tricky puzzle, especially after we had finished the border and the red area behind the zebra, which was by far the easiest part. It’s also a puzzle where looking at the picture on the box would have made a big difference but of course we don’t do that.

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Glow-In-The-Dark Puzzle

Photograph taken on Friday, March 21, 2025 by Henry
Glow-In-The-Dark Puzzle

Glow-In-The-Dark Puzzle

Glow-In-The-Dark Puzzle

Glow-In-The-Dark Puzzle

We’ve continued working on puzzles, doing those given to us by Donna, a family friend. They are mostly 500 piece puzzles and are fairly easy to put together but it’s something to do. We have a card table in our family room with a four foot square board on it. I added molding to the edge which reduces the number of pieces that get knocked onto the floor. It doesn’t prevent that completely and we finished one puzzle and found that a single piece was missing. We looked on the floor but didn’t find it. We left it there for a day or two and Cathy was on the floor stretching when she noticed the piece. I’m not sure how we missed it, but the rug we have seems to camouflage them very well.

While working on this puzzle we noticed that the surface of the pieces was a little rough. It wasn’t until we were done that we found out that it was a glow-in-the-dark puzzle. We put the boxes away while we’re working on them, to make them a little more challenging (and to avoid cheating). I set the camera up on a tripod and took pictures of it both with the lights on (the first image) and then with the lights off. The exposure was 30 seconds at f/4 at ISO 200.

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Van Gogh Puzzle

Photograph taken on Wednesday, June 11, 2025 by Henry
Van Gogh Puzzle

Van Gogh Puzzle

We finished another difficult puzzle recently. This is (as you almost certainly know) Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Similar to the puzzle of Monet’s Water Lilies, there are a lot of shades of blue in this. Also, the swirls make it hard to know which way is up for many pieces. Eventually, however, we got it done. We’ve been given a bunch of puzzles by a friend and we’ll work on a few of those next. They are mostly 500 pieces, instead of our standard 1,000 piece puzzles, which makes them considerably easier (but still a lot of fun).

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