Worst Jigsaw Puzzle Ever!

 

During the pandemic I have been doing a number of jigsaw puzzles in my spare time, so my thoughtful wife, Penny, has been finding a number of them for me to put together. Unfortunately, one of her purchases did not turn out so well as they shipped the wrong puzzle, in fact they shipped two identical National Park puzzles that we did not want. After a lengthy dispute, she was able to get her money back, but the company said we could keep both of the undesirable puzzles. Therefore I decided to put one of them together and try it out. One of our faculty members in my department at Washington University teaches a very popular National Parks course so I thought I could at least learn the names of some of the parks.

First off this puzzle is made from a very flimsy card stock which is not much thicker than a playing card. The backing of the puzzle is stamped with the letters A through H which allow you to figure out which section of the puzzle it is which can be helpful since almost all the pieces are identical in shape and can easily fit together incorrectly.

Further frustrating the assembly was the simple fact that the image that was on the box and the included enlarged photo was NOT the same image that was on the actual puzzle! The box and insert had an image that included 61 National Parks, but the puzzle actually had 62 parks. It included the White Sands National Park (2019) which was not on the box. Plus the color and shading of the border did not match the included images either, with the puzzle border being much lighter.

Nonetheless I was finally able to piece the puzzle all together and have the completed puzzle as my photo above demonstrates. I still enjoyed doing the puzzle, but it was not as well made as most of the other puzzles I have put together, with my favorites being the ones from Bits and Pieces. The Masterpieces Audubon Lake Life puzzle was also very well imaged and I liked that one as well. The ones you must watch out for are these flimsy ones which all have the DCBA/HGFE grid on them. I have another one of those which was equally flimsy, but at least on that one the images actually matched. There is no company name on these puzzles and it has the very generic name of "Jigsaw Puzzle".

Beware of these cheap, flimsy puzzles!


Comments

Unknown said…
Agreed and they are horrible. Sadly I order a couple and can't even find where they came from.
12:00 AM
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