16. First Send from Full Send

A inaugural laser-cut jigsaw puzzle from a new company that is not just for adrenaline junkies (about 5400 words; 22 photos)

laser-cut    3.5mm basswood 5ply      Full Send Puzzles + Games
272 pieces   about 11” x 8” (28cm x 20cm)   2.0 cm/piece
artist – Alex McWhorter and an unidentified freelance artist
puzzle designer – Alex McWhorter and an unidentified graphic designer 

[Note: I had pleasant phone chats and exchanges of correspondence with Alex McWhorter, teh founder of Full Send, while preparing this review, but other than as a paying customer I am not associated with Full Send Puzzles + Games or its owner.]

I know that it is probably not fair or true but I tend to accept the stereotype that most avid jigsaw puzzle aficionados (and therefore the target market that most puzzle-makers aim for) are rather sedentary grandmothers. Other than being the wrong gender I pretty well fit that stereotype myself.  But this puzzle wasn’t designed with me or other elders in mind. What sort of people is it intended for?  Click here or on the following photo for a 1:22 minute YouTube video to find out:

Click on this image to watch a 1:22 YouTube video made by Full Send Puzzles. photo credit

This is the inaugural product from Full Send Puzzles + Games.  Since I am an authentic old fogey I had to do online research to find out what “full send” means.  Since I suspect that at least a few of this newsletter/blog’s readers are also elders I’ll tell you what I found.  According to dictionary.com it is an expression from extreme sports that means doing something full-throttle and with 100% commitment even if you risk failing. What we would probably call “giving it your all”  or “going all-out” even in dangerous situations.

My credentials to review this puzzle

There is part of me that recognizes that I may not really be qualified to review this puzzle that is not intended for the likes of me. But my self-image still includes remnants of my childhood, which occurred long before the invention of BMX, mountain biking, and bike helmets. Back then I would construct jump ramps on steep slopes in a nearby abandoned dumpsite-turned-scrubby-forest to challenge both me and my sturdy 3-speed Schwinn bicycle to stay upright. 

How could I know when a jump ramp was too dangerous? There was only one way to find out. It turns out that a lot of the jumps I made were definitely too dangerous. And, no,. my mother didn’t know about my adventures in a former dumpsite. When I came home and experienced the natural consequences of my bad decisions - iodine on my wounds - I just told my mother that I had fallen off my bike. It is a miracle that I survived my childhood without any broken bones (except toes, and they don’t count.)

Somewhat later in the 1960s when I was in university I was an active member of the Minnesota Rovers Outdoor Club. With them, besides hiking and camping I participated in such activities as rock climbing, white-water canoeing, and cliff diving. My favourite Rovers activity was exploring in the 13 miles of underground passages in Mystery Cave in southern Minnesota.  My patch from those days (above) still shows the evidence of me dragging myself along on my belly through the damp, wet mud of a particularly small branch of that cave that nobody had previously ever been in.

I’ll give one example from back then to prove that I can relate to the concept of “full send.”  A bunch of us went winter camping when it was 45⁰ below zero! (No need to ask if that number is Fahrenheit or Celsius:  -45⁰ is the same under both systems of measurement. ) Actually, it wasn’t a camping trip so much as a publicity stunt to protest against proposed mining exploration in the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, on the border between Minnesota and Manitoba. We were there to attract a TV camera crew to publicise our holding a protest rally in such extreme conditions. It worked! The BWCA is still a protected pristine wilderness.

Full Send Puzzles + Games

Full Send Puzzles + Games was founded by Alex McWhorter, a Doctor of Physical Therapy, and a keen mountain biking rider and racer, as well as a fellow who likes jigsaw puzzles. As a professional DPT as well as a puzzler he is well aware of the well-documented social and health benefits of assembling jigsaw puzzles. And as a mountain bike racing enthusiast he knows that there is a severe paucity of puzzles and games that have images that would appeal to most participants in extreme sports.

Alex McWhorter  photo credit

First Send is his inaugural attempt to remedy that situation. As this article about him and his new company explains, his aim is to offer adrenaline junkies a relaxing and mentally-stimulating indoor activity that maintains a tie to their active outdoor lifestyles and identities. According to Alex:

Mountain biking is my favorite sport, but I’m planning to get into other summer and winter sports. People that are into extreme sports tend to go all in. They like to have products that represent the sports that they love. It’s also a great way to reset and relax after you are done sending it during the day.  . . .

The covid quarantines definitely increased my interest in puzzles in general. I want to provide an alternative puzzle theme for those who are already into puzzles and hopefully pique the interest of those that may not have tried a puzzle since they were a kid.

Starting this new company and issuing this puzzle is an example of the “full send” concept in action. Prior to getting his DPT degree Alex had some experience as a graphic designer but he recognized that his strength was more in initial conceptualization than in finalizing artwork and designs, so he collaborated with a freelance artist for the image and a graphic designer to develop this puzzle’s cutting design. 

Alex also had neither equipment nor experience in laser cutting, and was unable to find an American puzzle-maker who would manufacture the puzzles for him, so he went global in his search. He found a Chinese company to make the puzzles to high standards. He had some business experience from running his medical practice, but navigating his way through international supply chain issues and the world of online retail has also been an entirely new learning experience for him.  That sounds like jumping into the business of supplying extreme-sports jigsaws puzzles FULL SEND to me.

[Digression about Chinese-made jigsaw puzzles:  Chinese wooden jigsaw puzzles (and many other products) are made and marketed under a very different business model than the rest of the world.

In North America and Europe we are seeing rapid expansion of small family-based laser workshop companies that set out to market their self-designed and self-made puzzles online (and sometimes through local retail storefronts.)  In China, on the other hand, the expansion in sources seems to be a booming of online retail companies who do not make their own puzzles. They sell ones made by large-scale puzzle manufactures who will make whatever products those retailers want to sell. The smaller-scale retailers themselves range from legitimate quality-oriented start-ups that want to compete in the premium-quality international marketplace, to absolute scoundrels.

(Note:  It may be that there has also been a recent expansion of workshop-scale laser puzzle-makers in China, like there is in the rest of the world, but if so they do not appear to be trying to market their products internationally.)

The giant puzzle manufacturers issue catalogs of ones that they have designed or commissioned themselves from artwork that they may or may not own or licence properly. They will also design and make puzzles from artwork and/or cutting patterns that the retailer provides, and are equally happy to do this for Chinese or non-Chinese retailers. I stumbled upon an English-language wholesale catalog once but I haven’t been able to find it again. It included many familiar-looking puzzles. The minimum order was for ten puzzles, and the price descended quite quickly with larger volumes.

(All of the Chinese-made puzzles that I have seen have used various grades of 3-4mm basswood ply. This thickness is ubiquitous in Asia and Europe, although 5 or 6 mm thickness is the more common thickness here in North America. I don’t know why basswood ply is used so extensively China, bust seemingly in no other country.)

The anonymous-to-us Chinese manufacturers are capable of manufacturing to very high quality standards, or cheap and nasty, depending what the retailer is willing to pay for. They can also package and label the products however the retailer wants. The manufacturers don’t seem to care about quality or copyright; their own reputations aren’t on the line, and the Chinese government isn’t regulation-oriented when it comes to consumer or copyright protection. 

This large-manufacturer-small-retailer format isn’t just about wooden jigsaw puzzles.  The same dynamic applies to many products. I first began to learn about it about 35 years ago when Chinese companies began to sell robotically-made binoculars. (Back then binocular astronomy was my main hobby.) Some of the new Chinese binoculars were among the very best in the world – rivalling the best Japanese and German optics. When my $749 Fujinon 17x70 was stolen from my van, based on online advice from optics experts I bought a replacement Chinese-made one for $179 that proved to be every bit as satisfying as my previous best-in-class Fujinon. But at the same time, many other Chinese-made binoculars, including ones made by the same manufacturer, were just cheap garbage.

I wrote about Chinese-made puzzles in July in this review.  In that essay I discussed both the financial and ethical risks of ordering from Chinese retailers, but also about the potential to find high-quality, legitimate values.  End of digression.]

Alex’s business model also reflects his love of the outdoors.  He has committed to donating partial proceeds from the sale of each puzzle towards reforestation through to the environmental registered charity One Tree Planted. 

First impressions

This is my first puzzle to come in a corrugated box – not the standard brownish acidic cardboard used in shipping boxes but high-quality material that feels more like poster board.  It doesn’t look fancy but it served the purpose of protecting the pieces during shipping, and I am sure that it will be able continue to protect them for a long time to come.  (Actually, although I appreciate the design of high-quality boxes that “heirloom quality” puzzles often come in I would prefer not to pay for extravagant packaging.)

As a person who has limited storage space for my puzzles (and who doesn’t have that problem?) I appreciate that the box is no bigger than it has to be for this rather small size puzzle.  First Send’s 272 pieces, which average at 2 cm² each, assemble to become 28 x 25.5 cm (about 11” x 8”.) That is sufficiently small that I could probably have assembled it on the small cork bulletin board that I usually only use for sorting overflow loose pieces or flipping completed puzzles over to see the back side. The compact size means that this puzzle is much more suitable than most jigsaw puzzles of a similar piece-count for assembly in a restricted space, like a tent or camper van, making it fit for use as a rainy-day backup plan for a car-camping outing.

As mentioned above, this puzzle was made by an unnamed Chinese manufacturer, but it seems to have been to the highest of quality standards.  The image is printed directly onto 3.5 mm thick five-ply basswood plywood.  The plywood itself seems to be of the finest quality, with thin flawless veneer on the outer layers and I could see no voids or knots in the interior layers. 

Basswood (aka linden or limewood) is a fine-grained durable material but it is low-density, weighing only about 60% as much as birch or the other hardwoods or MDF (medium density fibreboard) that is used in other countries for wooden puzzles.

This light weight, combined with the fact that the pieces are small and fairly thin,  means that the pieces do not have as much heft to them as most puzzles’ pieces. They were large enough to handle comfortably even with my clumsy fingers, but for me they do not deliver as rich of a tactile sensation  as most wood puzzles. But perhaps my lack of appreciation for the light weight is just my own bias. Maybe I should not focus on weight and appreciate that the inherent durability of this well-made plywood, and the fact that the image is directly printed onto the wood, bodes well for the pieces of this puzzle not showing much wear from usage over time.

Cutting and cutting design

Perhaps the biggest rap that fans of hand-cut jigsaw puzzles have against laser-cut ones is the width of the swath of material that gets burnt away by the laser beam as it cuts through the wood, called a kerf. A typical kerf for a laser-cut wood puzzle is 0.1 mm - some more, some less - and the line looks black due to charring. (Modern hand-cutters use commonly use scroll saw blades that are only 0.023 mm thick for cutting jigsaw puzzles, and the cut-lines are practically invisible.)

Some experienced puzzlers prefer cut-lines that are as narrow as possible. Personally, I have not developed such a preference, and in fact I usually don’t even notice the width of the kerf in my puzzles. But in this case, First Send does seem to have a more narrow cutline than usual. The black line is also less conspicuous in the only place where it is noticeable in this dark image - the white patch containing the Full Send logo on the front of the bike. I don’t know if this narrow kerf is because superior equipment is being used used by the Chinese manufacturer, or they have expertise in using the same laser machines as others, or if it is a characteristic of the basswood material.

Another drawback of laser-cut puzzles is scorching around the cut-lines on the back of the puzzle. Most laser-cut puzzles have this back-side scorching to a greater or lesser extent, including those from highly-regarded puzzle companies like Artifact, Nautilus and Liberty. Only a few have figured out a way to avoid it, and how they do that seems to be closely-held trade secrets. It is a tribute to the anonymous Chinese company that there is extremely little scorching on the back of First Send.

Now, the issue of back-side scorching only really affects people (like me) who turn their puzzles over to see the cut-lines better, and possibly to discover patterns in the cut or multi-piece whimsies that they had not recognized during assembly. And even then, I don’t think of it as a major flaw - seeing the scorching makes me feel like I am accessing a hidden world known only to us puzzling insiders. But it is a yet another sign that First Send is the product of quality puzzle-making.

The cutting design for this puzzle is by an unnamed graphic designer, based on a concept, photos and sketches from Alex McWhorter.  I don’t know who contributed which elements in the design, but the bottom line is that the collaboration produced many features that would make this puzzle challenging and attractive even for experienced puzzlers.

Many of the less-expensive laser-cut wooden puzzles include an assortment of whimsies set within a matrix of pieces that resemble those from a typical cardboard jigsaw puzzles, and only have one kind of connector.  I think this is a hold-over from the days before cardboard puzzles, when cutting in a grid was the quickest way to cut jigsaw puzzles with a scroll saw and most of the factory-made puzzles were cut that way. First Send has plenty of figural pieces but they are surrounded by a much more random-appearing style of cutting that makes for a great variety of interesting piece shapes, and is a more effective use of laser cutting capability.

This is a fairly typical style of cutting design for the non-whimsy pieces in many comparably-priced laser-cut jigsaw puzzles, in this case from Wentworth Wooden Puzzles in the UK.  photo credit

Part of the back side of First Send.

The style of connectors can also add to the challenge and the fun. As you can see in the above photo, its non-whimsy pieces have two kinds of connectors to help both to find and lock their neighbours into place. There are round interlocking knobs and hooks that may or may not lock pieces to each other. Together with the abundance of figural pieces (which rarely lock in place) assembly of First Send is somewhat challenging if it is taking place on a smooth surface like a table-top, where islands of assembled pieces can become disturbed by a slight bump or brush of a sleeve. This problem can be ameliorated by assembling on a higher-friction surface, like my cork bulletin boards.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that assembling First Send is like assembling a vintage “push-fit” jigsaw puzzle that has no interlocking of pieces or in which only the edge pieces interlock. Even among folks who are experienced and proficient with wooden jigsaw puzzles those are definitely a love-it-or-hate-it sort of thing. No, it is semi-interlocking. That adds to its challenge, and I think, to its fun.

These are just a few of the silhouette pieces in First Send.  All of them are shown near the end of this essay, below the Spoiler Warning.

Speaking of fun, this puzzle has a phenomenal 34 attractive and lifelike whimsies, of which 7 are multi-piece ones.  Fifty-two out of the puzzle’s 272 pieces are either figurals or parts of them! All of them relate to outdoor extreme sports. Some are silhouettes of people in action; others are their equipment, and a few are mountains. They are not as finely-detailed as those in some puzzle brands (like this one) which feature incredibly intricate silhouettes, but that also means that none seem to be so fragile that they could be readily subject to breakage and need to be handled with special care.  The whimsies always appear upright in this puzzle, which is a special touch in cutting design that I appreciate.

It isn’t just the pieces that are interestingly shaped – the whole puzzle is!  This jigsaw puzzle isn’t one of those standard rectangular ones for which the best strategy is often to try to complete the straight outside edges first. It has no straight edges, which is another feature that makes assembly more challenging and fun.

The image

photo credit

Alex McWhorter established Full Send Puzzles + Games to create products with images specifically aimed at adrenaline junkies. I am not (or at least no longer am) in that target market so I cannot judge how appealing this image is to them. But as a becoming-experienced puzzler, I see the dark but vividly coloured poster-like artwork as being well suited for a jigsaw puzzle. It includes some largish areas that have distinctive colours and textures that enable a quick start, but it also has other areas that made assembly for me more challenging as I progressed. (See below, after the Spoiler Alert, for a description and thoughts about my assembly experience.)

As with the cutting design, Alex McWhorter created the original concept and sketch and then turned it over to an unnamed commercial artist who painted the final image (or more likely these days, rendered it on a computer.) It uses a very limited colour palette, with no blending of the colours. I counted black, white, 2 shades of magenta, 2 yellows, 4 blues and 2 dark blueish-grey tones, and one each of orange, red, and olive green.

There was a similar illustration style used in the Viking puzzle which I reviewed in July.  From that puzzle I learned that such a limited palette can be an aide to assembly.

Jigsaw puzzles come in a huge variety of styles of artwork to appeal to differing personal tastes. I liked this colourful action image as soon as I saw it (perhaps because it reminded me of my reckless youth as explained above) but I came to appreciate it even more as I lived with it during assembly. Would it appeal to other elderly folks who fit the wood-puzzling stereotype? I suppose that depends on their personal tastes. 

If a stereotypical granny’s preferences in images were to run solely towards kittens, garden fairies and butterflies, or old master fine art paintings, this puzzle might not be the most welcome Christmas present for her despite the fact that its cutting design would be a perfect fit.  She might not be able to get past seeing a menacing masked figure barrelling dangerously through the woods. But all of the granny puzzlers that I know would probably love this puzzle even if they only felt so-so about the image.

My one complaint about this image is its inclusion of a stark white patch in the centre with the Full Send logo.  For me, it detracts from the artwork.  But then, that might be because of my own old fogey tastes. I don’t wear clothing that prominently features the designer’s logo if I can help it, and can’t understand why so many people are willing to be walking billboards. 

International delivery and customer service

I haven’t commented on customer service in my previous puzzle reviews because I haven’t had need to need it.  In this case I did, and the response was excellent.

I ordered this inaugural release as soon as I learned that it was released through the wood puzzle grapevine. That was partly because I liked the look of the puzzle and its price, but also because I like the idea of supporting a new start-up business. But when I tried to order it online I discovered that the company’s online ordering software was not set up for international sales.  So I emailed the company and asked if they would be willing to ship to Canada. 

That led to a reply from Alex that he had not yet begun to look into international shipping but he was willing to do so:  We could arrange for the sale outside of his shipping software since for him this would be an experiment. I replied that I did not require quick delivery and would like a frugal mailing option. He looked into it and found that the US Postal Service’s lowest international shipping rate is called First-Class Package International Service, and the cost was about $15. I agreed and paid for the puzzle and postage with PayPal.

When the puzzle arrived it was delivered by UPS, not by Canada Post, with a COD charge of $36.95 CDN!  The charge included a UPS “brokerage fee” of $29.25.  When I contacted Alex about this he was as shocked about this as I was, and immediately offered reimbursement to me for this unexpected expense. I sent him a photo of my UPS COD invoice, and he immediately processed a refund via PayPal.  I am entirely satisfied with how he handled this issue.

Since then, Alex has arranged for the puzzles to be available through Amazon.com as well as directly from his company. Normally I prefer to purchase directly from small businesses, but in this case the Amazon shipping costs make that option rather tempting. First Send is eligible for free delivery to Amazon Prime members, and its rate to ship to Canada is only $15.01 USD (of which $4.92 is a customs fees deposit that will be automatically refunded by Amazon when they find that there is no duty owing for puzzles coming to Canada.)

[Update: I also received good customer service on another issue. Sometime after assembly, and after this review was posted, I somehow lost one of the small pieces. I contacted Alex about this and asked for a replacement piece, including a photo to show the piece I had lost, and offered to pay for it. He mailed it to me without charge. Thank you, Alex!]

Conclusions

Alex McWhorter intended this puzzle as a downtime activity for young outdoor athletes, and I suppose, for fans of watching the X games.  I don’t fit either of those categories but I enjoyed this puzzle.  Of course, it isn’t as splendid of an experience as assembling a good, premium 1/4” thick puzzle, but I can’t afford to exclusively buy such luxuries. I need to mix them in with more frugal satisfactory alternatives.  At a current price of $39.95 USD this 272 piece puzzle is a very satisfactory alternative for me, as I think it would be for most wooden puzzle fans including the stereotypical puzzling grannies even if the artwork is not to their usual tastes.

Many families discovered during the covid restrictions that assembling jigsaw puzzles can be a great intergenerational social activity.  It is often difficult for older people to find common interests with those of a younger generation. I expect that I will enjoy assembling this puzzle with my bike-obsessed grandson Reid, but that might be in a couple of  years – he is only six years old now.

As for the intended target market for this puzzle of extreme sports aficionados, my impression is that Alex nailed it with the image in First Send.  My only concern might be to question whether the cutting design of First Send might be too challenging for some of them who may not have assembled a jigsaw puzzle since they were in elementary school.

Perhaps their introduction to adult jigsaw puzzling should be something easier; say, a 100 piece puzzle with nice straight edges so they won’t get discouraged or damage their egos on their first attempt. With its 272 oddly shaped pieces, irregular outside edge, and not being fully connecting, First Send is not really the jigsaw puzzle equivalent of a “bunny hill.”  Yeah, right. Try telling that to an extreme sports participant! You’ll hear what they think about doing something that’s easy!

Spoiler alert

The following is a walkthrough of my assembly of this puzzle, including both pictures and my observations about the challenges it presents.  It ends with hi-res photos of both the completed puzzle and its back side which show the full cutting design.

If you already plan to buy this puzzle, this content could detract from the feelings of discovery that you might prefer to enjoy while assembling it yourself. On the other hand, if you haven’t yet decided whether or not to buy the puzzle this might include information to help you decide (and if you are like me, you will probably have forgotten most of this content by the time you assemble the puzzle anyway.)

And if you have already decided that you don’t want this puzzle you may or may not find the following content interesting.

It is your call as to whether you want to proceed!

Assembly experience

I did not use the picture on the box cover for reference during assembly but the striking image was still pretty fresh in my brain. 

Since this is a small puzzle – only 272 pieces – I thought it would be more fun to do it without my usual sorting, except for the separation of the whimsy pieces (and that was mainly for picture-taking purposes.) This absence of straight edges during this rudimentary flipping confirmed what I thought would be the case, that the puzzle did not have a rectangular shape.

The light-blue appearance of the pieces on the left side of this photo are due to reflection.

The pieces seemed to be quite dark. That caused a bit of worry because in my experience, dark puzzles can feel rather gloomy. This concern turned out to be unwarranted.

As mentioned above, I learned from another puzzle that the limited palette of colours, and the consequent limited ways to create shading, can be an aide to assembly.  I flipped the whimsy pieces rightside-up because I anticipated that, like Viking, colour would be more important to me than shape for this puzzle.

I began with the five pieces with stark white that combine to make the Full Send logo on the front of the bike, where in a race the competitor’s number would be. Next, I turned my attention to the relatively few bright blue, orange and red pieces. They later turned out to be a sunset or sunrise sky, and these were adjacent to large patches of yellow with olive green, which turned out to be sunlight on the tops of deciduous trees.

Next I assembled pieces with a distinctive pattern of black and blue-grey that turned out to be the bike’s knobby front tire. These were adjacent to pieces with a tiger stripe pattern in black and magenta that turned out to be the trail.

I added more tiger-stripe pieces to the trail and found that I was beginning to make a bottom edge. There were also large patches of light blue, and I already had some of that adjacent to what it was increasingly becoming obvious was the sky. The red and orange, against that blue background, were horizontal cloud bands. 

Things were moving along pretty quickly. It was only by pure luck (and thin yellow stripes on the sides of the legs) that I was able to connect the logo on the front of the bike to the mountains via the rider’s blue-grey and black legs.

Next was searching for specific multi-coloured finely-detail pieces to assemble the rider’s helmet and goggles, and arms, and to properly connect the front tire to the bike and rider.  At this point in the assembly it was fairly clear from the top and bottom edge pieces and the clouds that my assembly was correctly oriented.  I became quite appreciative that the artist had really given this image a lot of action through the leaning tilt of the bike and rider.

I continued with the pieces that included yellow, and the tree-trunk pieces that had orange as well as black and the two shades of magenta, but progress was slowing down about here. I switched to trying to place the few remaining pieces that included bits of magenta & black tiger stripes:

I finished up all of the magenta and got down to only a few colours. Green and black (and sometimes yellow) coniferous foliage trees were turning out to be quite challenging. So were the dark bluish-grey pieces that I thought (correctly) would be boulders.  Increasingly I found that colour matching was becoming less useful and I had to focus on the shapes in the cutting.

Pretty slow going!  Not frustrating, mind you – it felt like a fun challenge. The irregular edge and having only two types of connectors (hooks and knobs) was really coming into its own at this stage in raising the difficulty level. Assembly now involved lots of trial and error shape-matching.

My impression at the time was that the cutting design for this last part of the puzzle was particularly tricky, but maybe it was just because there were so few colour clues left. There were a few pieces during these final stages that seemed like line-cutting, but that was probably just random coincidence.  For whatever reason, each placement now felt like a victory.

It was about this stage that I noticed that the bright yellow highlights on the tree branches and the more subtle illumination of the boulders do not reflect the same consistent source of light as is shown on the background mountain. With assembly going slowly this gave me things to ponder. Why is there so much bright sunlight in what appears to be a fairly dense forest?  Why is there sunlight at all when the clouds seem to indicate that the sun has set?  Can I blame this inconsistency for the difficulty I was having in completing the trees and boulders?

At first I thought this illumination irregularity was a mistake, but more pondering led me to conclude that it was an artistic choice that the illustrator made. This is not an impressionist painting in which the artist aims to authentically portray the effects of sunlight on colour and shadow. In this image the artist uses the yellow on the coniferous trees, and the bright orange on the trunks of the deciduous ones, to dramatically pull the focus of attention towards the centre of the image, as do the horizontal clouds and trail tiger stripes. A more realistic rendition of a bike ride through the forest at the depicted time of day would have made for a very dark and challenging puzzle indeed!

I was forced to the conclusion that the difficulty I was facing in completing the puzzle was the product of good puzzle design, and my own still-developing assembly skills, not bad artwork! And if I am going to blame anything for my slow progress it should probably be that my brain was pondering rather than staying focused!

All of the loose pieces that were left were parts of either the green and black conifers or the dark blue/grey boulders.  I decided to focus on the boulders first, mainly because the of the jagged pieces of the coniferous foliage were more recognizable as edge pieces and I thought that finishing the boulders first would be leaving the easier part for last.

I was wrong! With some puzzles you can feel your progress accelerating near the end. But this turned out to be one of those that stayed challenging right down to the last few pieces. There was still a lot of trial and error involved in looking for where to put them, right to the very end.