BIG BOXES

Wow, check out this box of Educa's new 33,600pc Wildlife puzzle. What a puzzle!

Thoughts on the new big boys

 I have been thinking about this, I think the New York Skyline will be more fun to build. It is a  special challenge to offer a massive format puzzle that is both aesthetically appealing in its completed state and great puzzle to construct.

Take most massive paintings, it would be extremely boring as a 35K puzzle! I think this is why people prefer Educa's Life and Wildlife to Ravensburgers Double Retrospect. After looking carefully at new york. I think it will be great to assemble because of all the detail. Other new york puzzles (Ravensburger 12,0000 with the dumb saturn in the sky) are not realistic or monotonous whereas the new one is neither.

What do you guys think?

Ravensburgers new 32,000pc offering. Fantastic overall image and great detail at the piece level. Considering Ravensburgers awesome fit and finish, this puzzle will be a pleasure to assemble! Probably my most anticipated puzzle.

Educa's new 33,600pc Wildlife. I think on the piece level, it will be great to assemble but the overall image is not to my taste. Seems everyone is this animal illustration kick. 

12,000pcs - This is gonna suck. Monotonous and at the end of the day, its completely unrealistic.

New 18,000 piece version of the Sistine Chapel from Educa

Sistine Chapel - 18,000pc, Educa
Educa's fresh new photography of worlds most recognized ceiling

Michelangelo would be proud of the monstrous new offering from Educa. This fresh take on the familiar ceiling is the largest puzzle of his work measuring 10.5ft long by 5ft wide! Educa's former release of 8000pc at 8ft by 3ft is dwarfed by comparison. We own the 8000pc version and are working on it as we speak. I don't normally like to redo puzzles in a larger format, but I will be making an exception for this big boy!


Here is an interactive map of the puzzle. Zoom in and out and use your mouse to pan left to right. You can view it in its own full window here

The New King of Large Puzzles - Educa's 33,600pc Wildlife

Installation of Educa's 33,600pc Wildlife puzzle. The new world's largest puzzle!

WOW! The world just got a new largest puzzle! 33,600 pieces toppling  Ravensburger's 4 year hold on the title!! Educa really heated up the largest puzzle arms race again with the new 33,600 piece Wildlife puzzle and takes the crown from Ravensburger! I cant wait to get my hands on this big boy!

I inquired with Educa and found some more information! The puzzle comes in 10bags of 3,360pcs each and is finished with the traditional Educa Gloss Finish. Additionally, Educa had this press release to share:

A RECORD PUZZLE

At the Nuremberg Trade Fair, Educa presents the puzzle with the greatest number of pieces in the world. A 33,600-word challenge

The greatest puzzle challenge on the planet consists of no more and no less than 33,600 pieces. Educa presented the puzzle with the greatest number of pieces in the world at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, the most important event in the toy sector in Europe. This record size puzzle measures 5.7 metres long and is 1.57 metres high and has been christened Wildlife.

Wildlife comes in a special packaging for the occasion: in a wooden box with wheels, for easy handling and transport. The illustration will take the puzzle doer to the brilliant wildlife of Africa. Lions, elephants, giraffes and all kinds of animals inhabit a lush forest that can be put together, piece by piece, until you reach that magical moment of filling in the final one of the 33,600 small parts of which the image is made up. From March, it will be found at usual points of sale. Educa already had a large format puzzle, called Vida, which consisted of 24,000 pieces. Wildlife will now become its older brother as well as the puzzle with the greatest number of pieces in the world.
For David Olesti, Educa Borras’ marketing manager, this puzzle “is the greatest challenge in the world of puzzles. It is also a complete illustration created for the occasion and not the sum of different separate images, which makes it even more exciting”. The author of the illustration is Adrian Chesterman, an English artist who lives in Malaga. The author confesses: “working on such a large scale and with a subject that I like was a very exciting challenge. I have done drawings of animals almost all my life and I love nature and wildlife. Therefore, drawing a gigantic scene with all these wonders of the animal kingdom was a great delight”.
Obviously, the largest puzzle in the world also includes Educa’s Missing Pieces system, a unique service in the world that takes care of sending pieces that have been lost or damaged free of charge. The people at the Missing Pieces Archive receive applications, deal with each request, look for the pieces and send them by post at no cost for the user, in the shortest possible time.
There are many advantages in doing puzzles, so it is quite clear that one consisting of 33,600 pieces will be even more beneficial. The abilities that specialists consider to be developed when doing this kind of activity are motor skills, laterality, dexterity, creativity, socialisation, language, emotion and self-esteem.

-Thomas


Here is an interactive map of the puzzle. Zoom in and out and use your mouse to pan left to right. You can view it in its own full window here

Mounting an 8000pc puzzle to the ceiling

Trionfo degli Asburgo - 8000pc from Educa is mounted to the underside of our retractable puzzle table (Shown here stowed on the ceiling)

So when it came time to mount this beast there were several hurdles including how to flip it all over, and how to attach it to the table. The best way to explain it is with pictures so here goes.

Step 1: Break the puzzle back into sections that will fit on our puzzle boards. It just so happens that that size is the same as the die used to cut this puzzle (1000pc). The puzzle breaks neatly into 1000 piece sections. Incidentally, the piece pattern repeats for each section which aids in assembly significantly!

Next sandwich each section between two puzzle boards (cardboard). While pinching these together tight, flip them over. If you were ultra worried, you could use masking tape each time to insure the boards don't separate. It's not a terrible idea! These glossy puzzles are slippery!

Here it shows the reassemble of the puzzle upside down. Note, it should be obvious, but after you flip a section over, you have to swap places with its neighbor in the same column. 

Assembling upside down. Notice that the section in the second row right side up is actually the lower section but slide into place where it will go upside down (what was on the bottom has to go to the top)

A sea of pieces!

I then applied clear contact paper (using help from my neighbor) and rolled the puzzle around a pool noodle (you know, its a 5 dollar pool toy to float on). This made removing the puzzle from the table easy to do without messing it up.

We then flipped the table upside down and rolled the puzzle out onto to the table right side up. I centered the puzzle and placed tape around the border. The tape is to give a guide to make sure we lay the puzzle back down centered and to provide a clean edge for the glue.

Now we rolled the puzzle back so that half the area was exposed. Notice the much larger diameter roll. Dont try and make a tight roll, the pieces can't flex with that contact paper on the back like the can the other way!

We used plain old puzzle glue. This particular glue is from Mega Puzzles. We have been using spray adhesive (3M #44) as suggested by Scott Slater but we have found that the glue never really sets up and have had several puzzles peel away from their foam backing. Since this puzzle is going to hang upside down on the ceiling, I really did not want that to happen. I did a test glue of a piece of contact paper to the wood using the puzzle glue and it worked fantastic! We are going to switch to plain old glue from now on (NOTE: We dont apply glue to the front of the puzzle, we use contact paper on the back to keep the pieces together, the glue is to hold the contact paper to its mounting only). We prefer this method because if you ever did want to disassemble the puzzle, you can remove it from the contact paper and this puzzle glue will break away from whatever you have glued it to. Since we plan on moving someday, this is a real consideration. Regardless, this glue appears to be the trick versus spray. I used a squeegee to spread the glue around.

Finished product! It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be!

Burning the Midnight Oil

I worked hard last night to finish up the Trionfo degli Asburgo 8000pc from Educa. It is super hard, but what the heck, you only live once. It took until 3am to finish assembly and another half an hour just to get all the sections together!

I am really glad this one is done, it is not my favorite puzzle! I don't recommend this puzzle because of the poor image quality (its blurry AND the color fidelity leaves a lot to be desired). I guess it worked out that it showed up 75% completed! I don't know that I could have done all 8000 pieces! This puzzle was hard because of the poor image.

Only 350-400 more pieces to go!

Assembly complete

Final Assembly

Complete! I had to rebuild the puzzle table in order to fit this beast. I will now adorn the underside of the table so when it is retracted, you can view the puzzle!

Detail #1

Detail #2

Detail #3

Detail #4

Detail #5

Detail #6

Detail #7

Detail #8

Detail #9

Life - Section A Complete / Wedding Beast: Day 3

Hi! We finished the firs section of Life!!!

Last night M finished up the first section of Life while I continued to sort the Wedding Beast. She did such a great job! I think she did about 700 pieces in one sitting! This wasn't enough for her either, she started on the 1000 piece Color Palette puzzle just as soon as she was done.

While we were moving life onto a board to clear the puzzle table, we had a lot of trouble. It was a two person job for sure and plenty of pieces came off and had to be reassembled. Life, as it turns out, is real lose, a bit of a whore if you will So, be careful with her, she is lose, you can't just toss her around like a tight little Springbok.

Oh yeah, at first we thought we were missing three pieces, ok we were missing three pieces. We found one in the sofa, and the other two we tracked down were inside the main box in the plastic bag the pieces came in. Turns out they never made it out of the bag!

Anyhow, all pieces were accounted for and now we have to figure out what the heck to do with it. Right now we are most likely going to mount it to foam and put underneath the puzzle table so you can see it when the table is raised.

M is powering through the last section of Life today!

25 days to complete the first 6,000 pieces!

The first two pieces of Wedding Feast...
9,118 to go!

Color Palette - 1000pc, Master Pieces
Available from Amazon.com
Started: 7/15/2013 (View Posts)

M cant get enough today, she started on Color Palette...

Life: Day 21

I thought I would show a video of our puzzle table after 21 days of life. We are almost done with the first section. Hopefully I can finish it up tonight! Last night I didn't do much. I ended up playing backgammon with a friend and losing something like 10 straight games. He is really good and I thought I knew how to play! I love being schooled!

Life: Day 20

Last night I ended up working until nearly 1am and only puzzled for two hours so I did not get a lot done. I started on the camel and ended up getting in around 250 pieces including the camel, donkey, back half of the horse, goat and most of the middle giraffe.

It was really fun puzzling, and this section is wrapping up nicely! Life is a really great puzzle. It is not hard but offers a good challenge and you don't get bored with it because there is so many different things to do. Its immense size means you don't see all of the detail until you assemble the puzzle and there are plenty of surprises on pieces. It's difficulty comes in the shear volume of pieces to assemble so that also keeps it interesting for the serious puzzler.

It was interesting to take a before and after photo because I had a time stamp on the two events. I can see that I managed to place a little over two pieces a minute. It seems my puzzling rate for large puzzles format puzzles seems to be around 100 pieces an hour. At that rate it will take about 10,000 hours to assemble the big boy list. According to the 10,000-hour-rule that should make us experts!

It's time to start building some animals. I like to disconnect the section I am working on and place it on board so I can build the puzzle in the correct orientation and not have to be contorted while putting it together!

.... 2 hours later. Time for bed. 

Let There Be Light

After a few days with the puzzle table, I realized something had to be done about the lighting situation. I thought about this for a while and realized a task light was the right choice! We would some lights from Office max for $18 each that fit the bill perfectly! They clamp on and can be moved and removed easily (as to be stored with the table and position where needed). The move about etc and the price was right.

Without hesitating, I went over to picked them up! We know have great lighting, the only thing i would do different is add two more! I might also put some blocks of hard wood in the table and drill holes for the lamp so that we dont have to mess with clamps and just slide the light where we want it. 

Last night we tackled Life for a long time. I had hoped to finish it last night, but Life threw up some resistance to being assembled! The last section of sky did not go much faster. For some reason, it was really hard. M struggled with the Zebras for some time too. She finally got them completed and picked off the 

Today, I am going to tackle it again. I am going to take the long hanging fruit of the giraffes and camel and then I will look carefully at what is left and make a decision then.

Our upgraded puzzle table with dual lighting!

19 Days of Life

Life: Day 18

Today I managed to knock out the surface water and most of the animals in it along with the 70% of the sky. (Guessing it was about 1000 pieces). We still may be able to finish section 1 tomorrow but we will have to really work hard at it. The rest of the sky should be pretty easy. When you work on a large section, the last third is way faster!

Off to bed for me.

-Thomas

Starting on the surface water. 

Surface water complete. This is SOOO much easier than the clownfish.

Most of the sky is now done. 

Life Update July 1st 2013

Tonight M and I worked on Life for a bit. M is still wrapping up the hot air balloons and I am busy filling in the water. I was able to get the remaining fish and some of the large coral heads together. It sure is nice to work on the puzzle now that I am done with the clown fish. The puzzle is a great way to spend easy time relaxing after a long day of work!

I still find it funny how I can remember pieces of this puzzle from August of 2009 (almost 4 years ago). I love seeing a piece I remember. Tonight M asked me about a piece she could not place and one look and I knew it was the giraffes neck where  he comes close the camel. For whatever reason, that piece has stuck in my head from the last time I worked on Life.

Here are the update pictures:

I managed to get the rest of the fish together and most of the larger coral heads tonight

M made great progress on the balloons.

New Puzzle Day: Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel 8000pc

New Puzzle day is one of my favorite kind of days! Today was a really good new puzzle day. Two puzzles showed up from ebay. One of which is Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel – 8000pc from Educa! This puzzle never looks like much when you see it online because the image is too big to be done justice. I went ahead and created in interactive map of it so you can explore this fascinating work. Everyone has seen a few of these panels (Creation of Man) but have you really seen the whole thing?

The puzzle version when assembled is roughly 9 feet long by 3 feet tall! It comes in 4 bags of 2000 pieces and should be relatively easy to assemble based on the section size and colors! I can’t wait to assemble this big boy!

Below is the interactive map: Double click to zoom in and click and drag to move the image around (You can also use the controls in the upper right)

Done Fishing

Tonight I finished up the the clownfish. I made it really hard on myself by not doing a better sort. As you can see by the image, almost every fish is missing pieces which made it 10 times harder to do.

In general, spend extra time sorting! It is probably the number one thing you can do to make a puzzles more enjoyable!

Goodnight!

Clowning around with Life continues

I am working at a decidedly slow pace on this... but never the less, the clownfish are starting to take form. I just need to finish the blue fish (tonight) and I will be "done" working on the fish and moving on to filling in the water.

These fish just dont seem to want to put themselves together. It's starting to look really great!

In other news, our puzzle closet just isn't working anymore, so I decided to stack up the puzzles against the wall. If I run out of wall, then I know its time to stop buying puzzles!

Clowning around

Wtf is taking me so long to get the clownfish done... Still not done

I think it comes down to the sort, I know pieces are in the very large animal section and I am not digging into it yet.