32. StumpCraft’s mini-puzzles, and minis in general

A review of the nine taster puzzles that StumpCraft released in 2023. 9 small puzzles = 1 very long essay + 3 digressions. (about 7700 words; 27 pictures)

Other than having received two sets of mini-puzzles to review for free (as explained below), and one other regular-size one from StumpCraft (Carnival by C.W. Jefferys) to be reviewed sometime later, I have no affiliation with the company except as a paying customer.

This newsletter/essay is comprised of two major parts: First, an introduction about StumpCraft’s recent move to add mini-puzzles to its offerings and an overview of the images on the three “flights” of puzzles that I assembled. The second part reviews these nine StumpCraft puzzles collectively and their suitability for the various roles that small puzzles can play.  Along the way there are three sub-essay digressions into related topics:

• The history of “whimwhams” (AKA partial alternate solutions);

• The benefits of MDF (medium density fibreboard) vs plywood as a material for the substrate of laser-cut puzzles; and

• A mini-review of a regular-size jigsaw puzzle made by Liberty Puzzles.

But first off, I would like to apologize for the length of this essay. If it is any consolation, and I know that it isn’t, it also took me a long time to prepare and write it. As is explained below under Methodology, this review and my previous posting about the History of StumpCraft report my research and conclusions related to about 60 puzzle assemblies that I have been doing since August. Here is how that happened:

Back in March StumpCraft’s founder and chief designer Jasen Robillard contacted me with an opportunity that I found irresistible:  He offered to send me for review an upcoming set of mini-puzzles that they were currently working on for free.  At that point none of this year’s mini-puzzles had been launched although they were already being previewed on the StumpCraft website. He told me that the one he had in mind for me wouldn’t be ready until late-summer. 

I presumed that the offer was because he likes my in-depth style of writing about puzzles (he’s a subscriber) and also because the ones he would send me have artwork that depict places near where I live that were painted by contemporary west-coast artist Catherine Robertson . I also presumed that it didn’t hurt that Jasen already knows from both my previous posts both here and on Facebook as well as from his sales records that I am already a big fan of his puzzles. 

But before those free puzzles arrived I bought a different set of three StumpCraft mini-puzzles that have artwork by Newfoundland folk artist Reilly Fitzgerald.  I had already decided to buy that set when it was first previewed because I have a particular fondness for folk art (as is discussed in this review which includes photos of some items from my own folk art collection.)

That gave me an idea. I contacted Jasen and suggested that the scope of my future review could now be broader than just the three Catherine Robertson minis and include the Reilly Fitzgerald ones as well.  He asked me if I also had bought the flight of three Calgary Artist mini-puzzles which were the first ones that had also already been released this year.  I said no.  He offered to send me those as well so that I could base my essay on all three of their sets of Canadian regional landscape mini-puzzles.

So that is what gave me nine puzzles upon which to base this essay, and how reviewing them mushroomed into a much bigger task than I anticipated.  My scope is now not just a review of these mini-puzzles but also musings about what roles mini-puzzles play that are different from those of larger jigsaw puzzles, and what began as an introduction for this review also mushroomed and got separated out as my previous essay

Introduction - an overview of StumpCraft’s mini-puzzles

Jasen Robillard and the three 2022 StumpCraft mini-puzzles that are not included in this review.  

StumpCraft only began making mini-puzzles in 2022 when they released three such puzzles. Prior to that the smallest puzzles they made were in the 200-piece range.  Each of those 2022 minis had different styles of images.  They were all big hits and one of them (Comin' Round the Mountain by Julie deBoer) became the company’s biggest selling puzzle of 2022. 

After a response like that I suppose that StumpCraft can be forgiven for having gone on a mini-puzzle frenzy this past year.  Jasen trained up Siri Olson to be a co-designer (see my previous essay here.) Between them, of the 13 puzzles that the company released this year nine have been mini-puzzles, and one (Birds & Bees by Pam Weber) is a  “duo of  diptychs” which seems to be Jasen-speak for four mini-puzzles mixed together in one box.

All of the images in these nine mini-puzzles are scenes from across Canada and were painted by artists who live in the regions they depict. They are all acrylic paintings that use fairly similar bright colour palettes.  They all have relatively simple images that scale down well to the puzzles’ small standardized dimensions – 12cm x 12cm (about 4¾” x 4¾”. )  Despite the puzzles’ small size their thickness is still the company’s full 6mm (1/4”) thickness. 

StumpCraft’s mini-puzzles are sold individually (currently $39 CDN or about $28 USD each) in aluminum tins that screw shut.  Related puzzles are also bundled in “flights” of three ($115/flight or about $85USD.) The term flight comes from the world of brew-pubs and wine bars, where arrays of small-size portions are often made available for sampling. In this context it reflects the fact that these are intended to be “taster” samples of the full experience of assembling StumpCraft puzzles.

[Digression about whimwhams:   A new cutting design feature that StumpCraft has just begun using in 2023 is that selected pieces can be re-assembled separately from the overall puzzle to form another picture. StumpCraft calls them “whimwhams” but they are more commonly known as puzzles-within-puzzles, alternate solutions, or more technically, partial alternate solutions. This cutting trick is used in all of these nine mini-puzzles. 

Folks in the Wooden Jigsaw Puzzle Club on Facebook, especially British jigsaw puzzle expert Jackie Armstrong, helped me trace the history of partial alternate solutions.  It has roots in a few hand-cut puzzles that were made back in the 1930s. But it is extremely difficult to design and exactly replicate the same cutting shape for use in alternate contexts using a scroll saw, so such puzzles were quite expensive, were rarely made, and it became a lost technique.

Relatively recently, Stave Puzzles resurrected (or possibly re-invented) the trick as well as other exotic cutting techniques for use in some of its ultra-expensive hand-cut puzzles, but they also rarely use it because of the difficulty. The recent advent of digitally designing cutting patterns for laser-cutting machines has made the technique easier to accomplish.  I presume that it is still quite challenging during the design stage, but once designed, computer-controlled lasers have no problem exactly replicating what they are programmed to cut. 

According to Jackie the first use of this technique for laser-cut puzzles was in 2010 by the creative but short-lived GoAnywhere Puzzle Company. 

The partial alternate solution for a GoAnywhere puzzle made circa 2010. Photo posted on Flickr by David Armstrong.

In about 2016 one or more of the designers who work with Liberty Puzzles began including them in some of that company’s puzzles. It was done with no fanfare but word soon spread among wood puzzle aficionados about these secret easter eggs. Puzzles that have them became quite sought after by some people and they came to commonly be called alternative solutions.

Unless you are looking for them partial alternative solutions to jigsaw puzzles can be quite hard to spot.  The problem is that if you don’t know that the puzzle has one, or even if you know that there is one but don’t know what to look for, you probably won’t find it. You’ll just wonder why the shapes of some of the pieces seem odd, but that is usually in the context of many other oddly-shaped non-whimsy pieces.

When used in an alternative solution the colours on the pieces do not usually relate to their neighbouring pieces as well as they do in the full puzzle. Some of the pieces might need to be used upside-down. Sometimes the puzzle pieces are really just components to build a 3D sculpture. Finding the pieces to build them might be a fun puzzle-within-the-puzzle but usually a hint picture or even clear instructions are needed (which raises a question - are you solving a puzzle if you are following directions?)

Liberty’s Woodland Wheel puzzle has perhaps the most elaborate alternate solution cut to date.  These photos were posted on Facebook by Ashley Nail.

Other laser-cut puzzle-maker, including DaVICI, Artifact, Victory, and now StumpCraft have begun to include such puzzles-within-puzzles among their offerings but they are less secretive about it. Whatever they call this technique it is promoted as a significant feature in their puzzles’ descriptions.  However Liberty still seems to treat theirs like a secret surprise.

StumpCraft likes to call their partial alternative solutions “whimwhams” and they first used them in its very challenging 529 piece Queen Bee by Kari Lehr puzzle released early in 2023.  Theirs are assembled as separate little jigsaw puzzles; to date they do not use pieces as components to make a 3D structure.

The partial alternate solutions in these three flights of mini-puzzles are are not as elaborate as those that larger puzzle but they do show an interesting evolution in Jasen and Siri’s use of the technique. In the Reilly Fitzgerald Flight the pieces for both a salmon and a lighthouse whimwham are drawn from all three puzzles. People who do not have all three of those minis cannot build them.  In the second flight (Calgary Artist Mountain Vistas) each puzzle has its own whimwham. So does the Catherine Robertson Flight, but in that one the three alternate solutions can be joined together to form a symbolic message.

The whimwhams of the three puzzles in the Calgary Artists Mountain Vistas flight.  The bottom are the hint pictures from an insert that came with the flight, and the top are the way that I assembled them without have referred to the hints.

End of digression.]

The images of the mini-puzzles I assembled

The Reilly Fitzgerald flight

The first series to be released has folk artist Reilly Fitzgerald’s folk art scenes of Newfoundland’s fishing heritage.

• Parson Harbour: First Snow shows what the remote ghost town of Parson Harbour looked like before the ill-conceived resettlement of its residents shortly after the British Colony of Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949.

• Smoky Skies The rowboat in the foreground and traps on the pier accurately reflect the artisan-fishery method that is still used by 2900 licensed lobster fishers in the pristine and cold waters off the south and west coasts of “The Rock”.

• Fishing for Halibut depicts Reilly Fitzgerald’s friend and patron Ray, a professional fisherman who lives in a village with a population of 60 people that is not accessible by road.

Frankly, these were my personal favourite images from all of the series. That may partly be because of my fondness for folk art (of which these are great examples!) or the fact that one of my other hobbies is singing sea shanties and other nautical folk music. But mainly I think it is because they are more up close and personal than the landscape images used for most of the other mini-puzzles.  I’m mainly a city-boy at heart.

I highly recommend looking through this gallery that shows many more of Reilly Fitzgerald’s wonderful paintings.

Since I like to discover puzzles’ images as I assemble them I did these puzzles without looking at the pictures, the enclosed information card, or the info on StumpCraft’s website.  I knew something odd was going on, but since I had not previously encountered an alternate solution in any StumpCraft puzzle it never occurred to me to look for alternate solutions. And even if I had known abut them I probably wouldn’t have thought to look for mix-and-match pieces from all three puzzles (as was done only in this flight.)

You need all three of the Reilly Fitzgerald mini-puzzles to make these two whimwhams    photo source (cropped)

The Calgary Artists Mountain Vistas flight

top left - This Is It by Cecile Albi; top right - Larch Valley by Alison Philpots; bottom - Emerald Lake by Ruolin Shi photo source

The second series is called the Calgary Artists Mountain Vistas flight and it features the beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and their foothills. The paintings are by three different artists:

• This Is It by Cecile Albi is a view from the currently-closed Cougar Creek walking trail from Canmore, Alberta into the Bow Valley Provincial Park, with the iconic Three Sisters in the background;

• Larch Valley by Alison Philpotts is an autumn view of a place just past Moraine Lake near the town of Banff which is within a National Park; and

• Emerald Lake by Ruolin Shi shows Mount Burgess looming over the Emerald Lake Lodge in Yoho National Park.

The StumpCraft website has biographical information about each of these artists and Jasen’s Deep Dive essay about this series includes links to each of their websites. You can see the artist’s views about having small prints of their paintings chopped up into little pieces by Jasen and Siri in this 2:18 minute television news story about the release of this series.

The Catherine Robertson flight

The images for these three puzzles are acrylic paintings by Catherine Roberts who has been a professional artist since the mid-1980s. She was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia and still lives here in White Rock, not far from the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, a major stop for birds migrating along North America’s west coast.

Just as Jasen has a not-so-hidden objective for his puzzles to raise people’s exposure to and appreciation of contemporary Canadian artists, Catherine’s artwork also has another purpose. The StumpCraft Deep Dive blog entry for this series says: “Catherine’s art aspires to ignite a sense of awe and responsibility for the natural world, nurturing a collective drive toward its preservation.”

The paintings are:

• The Marsh, The Meadow, The Mountain  The location of this painting is not stated but that mountain backdrop makes it look to me like it is somewhere in the Fraser River delta. (I presume that the only reason that the image’s avian star attraction doesn’t get into the title is that the word “heron” doesn’t begin with M.)

• Sidney in Summer The location of this one is obvious. This wharf is at the foot of Beacon Avenue, the town of Sidney’s main street, and is only about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from where I live.

• Sidney Spit isn’t in the town of Sidney but it is close by.  It is a long sandy peninsula stretching north from Sidney Island, about 5 watery km (3 miles) east of there, and is part of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.

The above photo is the meta-whimwham made by combining the individual alternate solutions from each of the three puzzles. Its voids constitute a message.  Siri was the lead designer for all three of these mini-puzzles and in StumpCraft’s Deep Dive blog for the flight she explains:

The whimwhams are built up from elements of the surrounding natural environment; altogether, they show the interconnectedness of our world with one missing piece - the animals. Our goal for these whimwhams is to serve as a reminder of what we have to lose if we don’t take care of our natural habitat and its residents. 

The Review

Methodology

I determined that this should not just be a review of the puzzles themselves based upon my usual standards of their quality of individual puzzles – their packaging, images and printing, design, fabrication, etc. It should also assess their suitability for the various roles that mini-puzzles might play that are different from large jigsaw puzzles. Therefore I needed to assess their fitness for varying circumstances.

The first circumstance is whether or not they do a good job at achieving what the StumpCraft website says is their intended purpose: 

Our mini puzzles provide a bite size taster of what StumpCraft has to offer. They're awesome for hospitality gifts, puzzling on flights or road trips, corporate gifting or breaks in your lunch room with coworkers.

That suggested to me that that I needed to determine whether they give a fair representation of StumpCraft’s quality of puzzle-making. That would be important to know if someone were considering buying one as a gift for someone else, or as an inexpensive way to try out the company’s products before investing in one or more of their larger puzzles.  Fortunately, I already had plenty of experience assembling StumpCraft’s larger puzzles to assist in that.

Mentioning “puzzling on flights” reminded me that sometimes it is the small footprint of these puzzles that is what makes them desirable.  Mini-puzzles are often assembled in places and circumstances where assembling a large puzzle would not be possible or appropriate.  So to test that I assembled some of them on confined surfaces (such as a small board or on a plate while reclining in my Laz-E-Boy.) I also brought them to coffee shops and a park and assembled them there.

Usually my reviews are based upon having assembled a puzzle just one time.  But mini-puzzles aren’t intended to be one big challenge, with a big reward of satisfaction from their completion.  The price of mini-puzzles is quite a bit less than larger ones, but on either a price-per-piece basis or in terms of how much entertainment-time an assembly gives, they are much more expensive than regular-size puzzles. They might be bought to be brought out when a person wants a fairly quick completion because time is limited.

I therefore suspect that mini-puzzles are more likely than large puzzles to be intended for assembly multiple times. So instead of just doing each puzzle once I assembled each of them four or more times over the past two months. It turned out to be quite a binge – probably 40-50 assemblies of this one style of Stumpcraft puzzle!  I usually chose them at random but a couple of times I did the same one twice in a row. I wanted to see if they become boring or too easy from repeated assembly or if I tired of them.

My conclusions about the suitability of mini-puzzles for various roles apply equally to other brands of minis. So besides these StumpCrafts I also reassembled other small puzzles in my collection as part of this binge. That involved re-assembly of five 50-60 piece 4” x 4” (10 x 10cm) tray puzzles made by the new English puzzle-maker Katherine Newman (one of which was reviewed here) and puzzles that were issued by Taralee Guild’s now-discontinued Tiny Puzzle Club subscription service. 

Parson Harbour: First Snow, one of these StumpCraft mini-puzzles (apologies for the reflection) along with mini-puzzles made by Taralee Guild and Katherine Newman .

Another possible role for mini-puzzles is to provide a break when one is bogged down or growing weary of the slow pace while assembling a larger one.  So I broke up my mini-puzzle binge by doing a large one and then switching to a mini at various times when its assembly slowed down. For that I chose a 510 piece one made by Liberty Puzzles called How the West Was One. 

Finally, another role is that the pieces of multiple puzzles can be mixed together to create a more difficult challenge.  I have done that once before with two vintage puzzles that had images by the same artist (see Gossamer Fairies and Supper in Fairyland here.)  In this case I randomly chose one puzzle from each flight.

So preparing for this review involved assembling puzzles about 60 times. Doing all that, plus all the research and writing, made preparing for this review-essay my most time-consuming puzzle project to date.

Packaging

StumpCraft’s individual mini-puzzles come in aluminum canisters with a lid that screws down.  Inside each can is a small packet of moisture-absorbing desiccant.  Keep that. It is probably not needed for when the puzzles are first packaged in the Calgary workshop but it could protect the pieces from potential moisture damage if they are ever put back into the sealed canister under conditions of high humidity. 

Flights of three puzzles are packaged in StumpCraft’s standard full-size box. That come with an insert card that has larger reference pictures for each of the puzzles on one side and information about the artist(s) and the series’ whimsies and whimwhams on the other.  Individual puzzles do not include such an insert but the sticker on the side of the canister includes a QR code that links to the flight’s page on the StumpCraft website. That includes links to both printable large-scale pictures of each puzzles image and to the designer’s “deep dive” notes about the series. Actually, the insert card is a very abbreviated version of the available online information.

My scruffy shoulder bag and mini-puzzles

The canisters provide good security for the puzzle pieces and I could easy fit three of them in my scruffy shoulder bag.  (As a 75 year old man I prefer not to call it my purse thank you!)  The collective packaging for a flight is less portable but the sturdy and attractive moss green box makes for very good presentation if it is given as a gift: It effectively conveys that these small puzzles are high quality and something special.

But the packaging does raise my only significant criticism of these puzzles: They are not as space-efficient for storage as they could be. Storage space in my apartment is very tight. I would appreciate that the cans and boxes be no larger than they need to be to hold the puzzles attractively and securely.  In this case the canisters are about two centimetres taller than they need to be. To keep the pieces from rattling around StumpCraft puts a puck-shaped piece of soy-foam in the bottom of each one.

Foam spacers used in the packaging

Those of you who are already familiar with StumpCraft puzzles probably recall that they also use foam spacers in their standard-size boxes to ensure that the pieces won’t shake around. To accommodate a flight of three mini-puzzles, in addition to top and bottom foam layers the boxes include a thick middle spacer to hold the canisters in place. Thus, three puzzles averaging about 70 pieces each are packaged in the same size box that holds StumpCraft’s 888 piece We Are the Lotus Kids puzzle.

(This is not the same as the issue of throw-away plastics for spacing in shipping packaging (StumpCraft uses mostly crumpled paper for that.)  In this case, the durable soy-foam will continue to be used for as long as the puzzles last; for “heirloom quality” puzzles like these that could easily be hundreds of years.)

Having standardized packaging certainly has advantages for storage and display of one’s puzzle collection and I admit that I do find StumpCraft’s standardization in box sizes/shapes to be an advantage for efficient storage of their puzzles in my ever-growing collection.  But in the case of these flights of mini-puzzles, the cans and boxes seem to me to be much larger than they need to be.

I contacted Cory Krygier, the StumpCraft partner who is in charge of sales and marketing, with some suggestions in this regard.  As for the size of the canisters, he said that the extra two centimetre height is because they have not been able to find shorter cans with screw-top lids: They put priority on security for the puzzle pieces over more efficient sizing.  I appreciate that puzzle-making involves trade-offs, and I certainly can’t disagree with that choice.

But with regard to the boxes he said it was as if I was reading their minds.  Now that they know that mini-puzzles puzzles will continue to be a core and expanding part of their product line they will be putting a priority on reviewing the packaging for them after this year’s holiday rush-season is over. They initially developed this packaging for the flights to conform with their packaging strategy for full-size puzzles. Now they will explore what packaging best suits this new (for them) category of puzzles as well as their objective to be as environmentally-friendly as possible. 

Fabrication and printing quality

As for the puzzles themselves, there isn’t enough good stuff I can say. They fully live up to the high fabrication and design standards I have come to expect from StumpCraft, and those are very high standards indeed. You can read my previous StumpCraft reviews here and here. The company obviously aims for perfection in all aspects of their production and hits that target.  I use them as my gold standard for assessment of the very best laser-cut puzzles.

These minis are made from the same full 6mm (1/4”) thick eco-gold certified medium-density fibreboard (MDF) as their full-size puzzles. That full thickness seems extra-rich in the context of these small puzzles. 

[Digression – MDF vs. plywood:  As for the material itself there is some difference of opinion among us wood puzzle nerds as to whether plywood or MDF is the superior material for laser-cut jigsaw puzzles. Plywood (or less commonly, solid wood) is the only wood that scroll-saw cutters use for their handiwork, so it might seem that it is the more prestigious material.  Indeed, the back sides of scroll-cut sawn puzzles are often a veneer of especially attractive hardwood so the puzzle can be assembled upside-down if a person is so inclined. Using plywood that has an extra-hard outer veneer also gives the pieces a very satisfying clicking sound when they are put into place.

But the real reason that hand-cutters only use plywood is that the resinous binding material in MDF is very hard on their fine ultra-thin saw blades.  It causes them to dull very quickly and to break. High quality plywood costs a lot more than MDF but the extra expense is definitely worth it for hand-cutters. 

But for laser-cutting that is not an issue. Lasers will just as easily cut through any kind of wood – it is just a matter of setting the machine to the proper power, focus  and speed. In fact, the reliably uniform density of MDF is a considerable advantage for laser cutting. The density of plywood can vary from place to place on both the inner and outer layers of the plywood, and the inner sheets in particular can have places with unexpected very high density including dense knots. Nature is like that. So plywood is made in various quality grades only the very highest grades have close-to-uniform density in the inner layers. 

In anticipation, unless the very best and most consistent plywood (i.e., the most expensive) plywood is being used laser cutting technicians often need to set their machine to cut through the worst case scenarios (to avoid any incomplete cuts that would ruin the puzzle.) That means cutting a wider swath than they need to. That is why very dark, prominent cut-lines sometimes detract from appreciation of the image on many plywood laser-cut puzzles.

The plain black edges of these MDF mini-puzzles vs. the brown colour and layers that show on the edges of 5ply and maple-clad poplar “3 ply”.

The wood grain showing on the back of plywood puzzles does look more attractive than the exposed bland back of MDF puzzles (unless that side of it is veneered) and their piece-edges have a more attractive look. Unlike MDF, in which laser-cutting turns edges to a uniform dark colour, when plywood is laser-cut it turns to an attractive chocolate brown that looks more woodsy.

But MDF has three features that balance those aesthetic disadvantages. First, it does not just have uniform density, it has uniform high density. Density equals weight, therefore puzzle pieces made of MDF have more heft and give a more rich tactile sensation than same-size plywood pieces (unless its inner layers are all made from very high-density hardwood), and they will also give the same satisfying clicking sound as plywood that is clad in an extra-hard veneer like maple or cherry.

Second, it’s fibres are all mixed together and go in every direction and are strongly bonded together. This lack of woodgrain makes the pieces less susceptible than plywood to chipping or breakage in places where the cutting makes thin necks or comes to a fine point.  And third, MDF is a much less expensive material than the high-quality hardwood plywood, and it is less susceptible to supply chain interruptions.  

I’m not going to weigh in on this debate. I won’t say that the aesthetics of heft are more important than the aesthetics of a puzzle having a woodsy-looking back and sides.  I won’t say that some puzzle-makers feel they need to use the more-expensive plywood (and therefore need to charge more for their puzzles) to overcome the fact that many people of my age have a prejudice against engineered wood because we associate it with that crappy low-density Masonite we remember from our younger years.  I won’t say that using recycled wood fibers is better for the environment than harvesting increasingly-rare hardwoods.

I will say that I have assembled top quality puzzles made from both plywood and MDF, and frankly I can’t tell that much difference in the satisfaction they gave me.  When I am shopping for new puzzles I don’t pay any attention to which material they are made from.   End of digression.] 

Back to puzzle fabrication: Using it’s top-of-the-line professional-grade Trotec Speedy laser-cutting equipment, StumpCraft’s cutting has always been very good.  I have never seen any front-side smudging on any of their puzzles, and there is very little discolourization from scorching on the backside of their puzzles.  While assembling these mini-puzzles it seemed to me that the cutting was even more tight-fitting than previous StumpCrafts I have assembled.  I asked Jasen about that and he confirmed that they have continued to improve in their understanding of how to make adjustments to the settings of their equipment in order to get the minimum possible amount of kerf (the swath of material vapourized by the laser) while ensuring that all pieces are completely cut.

Moving on to printing, while a few other premium puzzle-makers match StumpCraft’s laser-cutting fabrication skills I have not yet found one that has as fine of printing as they have. In previous reviews I have raved about StumpCraft’s UV (ultraviolet) printing directly onto the wood, and in particular about its occasional 3D effect that can bring so much life to images printed that way.  I have occasionally seen glimpses of this effect in the artwork of other companies’ UV-printed-on-wood puzzles but never as pronounced and effective as what StumpCraft sometimes achieves. 

This is the first time that i have been able to get the light right to show the 3D effect that I have often talked about.

The 3D appearance is real. Other colours have varying degrees of a matte finish with some of them looking like they are stained into the wood. Other colours are laid on thicker with a viscous ink and have a more reflective appearance. The colours that stand proud can vary from puzzle to puzzle.  This 3D effect isn’t in all of StumpCraft’s puzzles but it is there to some degree in all of the ones in these series.

Cutting design

From the beginning StumpCraft’s cutting designs have been among the best in the business. They create life-like silhouette whimsies (without resorting to additional accent lines) as well as ensure that their non-whimsy pieces are both interesting-looking shapes in their own right and make for just the right level of challenging assembly.  Although the outlines of StumpCraft’s figural pieces are sometimes very finely detailed I have never encountered a piece that struck me as being particularly fragile and requiring extra caution when handling or storing it.

The above photo is a representative sample showing two figural pieces from each of the nine puzzles. I do have one small quibble about them.  Like their large puzzles, each mini-puzzle includes both of StumpCraft’s two signature pieces – the maple leaf and the two-piece beaver. For a person who assembled a bunch of their minis one after the other like I did that meant seeing an awful lot of those same three pieces. I did notice that the signature pieces were scaled down for these puzzles but it might be better to include just one of those signature whimsy per mini-puzzle.

The following photo shows portions of the backs from four of these mini-puzzles with most of the figural pieces removed to highlight the cutting of the interlocking non-whimsy pieces. Note the diversity in styles of connectors and that it is sometimes difficult to recognize which pieces are edges or corners. In fact, as you can see in the middle of the photo where four corners come together, StumpCraft routinely disguises their corner pieces.

Portions of the backs from four of these mini-puzzles. Clockwise from the upper left:  Sidney in Summer; The Marsh, The Meadow, The Mountain; Emerald Lake; Parson Harbour: First Snow.

A new StumpCraft cutting design feature that I had not previously encountered was the whimwhams. I know from Facebook postings that alternate solutions are very popular with some people but I have never felt drawn to them and these didn’t win me over. 

The first flight that I assembled was Reilly Fitzgerald’s folk art images. Since I knew that I would buy that flight as soon as I first glanced at the preview posting I hadn’t read the write-up or designer notes, or even looked carefully at the pictures. (Usually i am a careful shopper for my wooden puzzles but I don’t feel a need to do that with Stumpcraft.) So I didn’t even know they were there until after I first assembled all three of them but I did suspect that something was up because some of the non-whimsy piece shapes seemed a bit odd.

Usually, StumpCraft’s non-whimsy pieces are interlocking unless they are line-cut or are following long graceful curves. These puzzles had some non-whimsy pieces that were not as interconnecting as I would expect, and they had some unusual connectors that seemed out-of-place. It wasn’t until afterward when I looked at the information insert that came with the flight that I learned that the company was introducing alternate solutions. 

I was able to assemble the whimwhams in the Calgary Artists and Catherine Robertson flights rather easily with only a quick glance at the insert to know what I was looking for. (I did them with the puzzles upside down to avoid the distraction of the puzzles’ images, and then turned them over to appreciate the whimwham images.) But the Reilly Fitgerald ones required careful study of the hint pictures and doing a search-for-the-piece-based-on-the-picture style of assembly that I don’t really care for.  I completed the salmon whimsy from that set, but never did finish the lighthouse one.  It seemed to be too much tedious work for too little expected reward. Although I assembled all of these puzzles several times I was never drawn to re-assemble their whimwhams. 

But perhaps this whimwham-phobia is just me and a reflection of what kinds of challenges I enjoy from jigsaw puzzles. For people who like alternative solutions they will probably be a positive feature. But for me they didn’t really add much to my enjoyment of the mini-puzzles. Maybe I’ll like them better in the context of a large puzzle. I’ll undoubtedly find out if that’s the case because I am definitely going to buy the newly-released 562-piece not easily phased by Angela Morgan that includes some.

Suitability for other roles for mini-puzzles

Remember how on its website StumpCraft says: 

Our mini puzzles provide a bite size taster of what StumpCraft has to offer. They're awesome for hospitality gifts, puzzling on flights or road trips, corporate gifting or breaks in your lunch room with coworkers.

The company says that these little puzzles are intended to give people a taste of the StumpCraft version of the wood puzzle experience (and, I presume, the company hopes that will lead to a taste for more and bigger doses of that experience.) Therefore whether or not these small puzzles are a fair representation is important information for people who are trying out a mini before investing buying a larger, more expensive puzzle from the company.

These mini-puzzles range in piece-size from 57 to 81 pieces. The resultant average size of their pieces ranges from 1.7 to 2.5 cm²/piece, with a combined average of 2.3 cm²/piece. That is almost exactly the same as the average piece size of StumpCraft’s full size puzzles. As discussed above, the fabrication and design quality is also equivalent to their full size puzzles so I would say that these are legitimate “bite size tasters.”

Assembling a ¼” thick premium jigsaw puzzle delivers a truly luxurious experience whatever the puzzle’s size, and these little guys deliver that experience well. The main drawback of these small puzzles is that they are over so quickly. But that could also be considered to be mini-puzzles’ main strength for StumpCraft. They did leave me wanting more.

As I discussed above in “Methodology” I did many repeated assemblies of all of these puzzles to assess their suitability for the various reasons why someone might want a small puzzle rather than a large one.  One of the reasons for my repeated assembling was simply to see whether they were suitable for repeated assembly.  As it turns out, I certainly did not tire of them or even find them to get much easier the second, or third, or fourth, or fifth time.  That really surprised me:  I thought that I would  “learn them.”  But I did not develop a detailed memory of their images or of the placement of their pieces.

Perhaps that is because all of their images are fairly similar styles of acrylic painting rendered in similar colour palettes.  Or because the cutting style produces such a wide variety of distinctive but uncategorizable piece shapes. Or maybe it was because I did not purposely try to remember those details. As I have often told you, forgetfulness is my special puzzling super-power. Even after this huge binge they are all still a modest challenge for me. I have no desire to become a speed puzzler so I don’t time myself when doing puzzles. But I don’t think that my assembly times sped up significantly despite the repetition.  So, for me at least, chalk up a few points for repeatability.

The mention of “puzzling on flights” suggests that they can be assembled in a small workspace. I didn’t go on any flights in the past couple of months so I tested that by assembling one on a dinner-plate:

I don’t recommend doing that. The plate was way too slippery. Doing them on a paper plate was a lot easier:

The 10” (25cm) paper plate with its deep rim to keep pieces from falling out was effective for assembling on my lap while sitting in a reclining chair instead of at a table, but such a plate is a bit too small to be ideal. I couldn’t spread the loose pieces out so they wouldn’t touch each other so that made searching more difficult in the early stages. Assembling on one of my small cork bulletin boards worked much better.

“Puzzling on flights” also suggests portability, so I brought them to coffee shops on six different days to assemble there. 

One of the times that I assembled a puzzle along with my cappuccino

Five of those times it led to chats with fellow café-goers; people were curious about these unusual-looking jigsaw puzzles.  When I brought my grandson to a skateboard park so he could play with his new BMX bike I assembled one on a bench. That led to a chat with a retired sponsored rider: He learned about wood puzzles and I learned about some suggested modifications to the set-up of Reid’s bike.

Usually I only have one puzzle going at a time but another experiment was to see how well these mini-puzzles would work for taking a break from the slow progress of assembling a large puzzle.  Liberty’s How the West Was One was sufficiently engaging that I never really needed to take a break from it, but there were enough slow times when I did appreciate taking such a break. Unfortunately, in this case that worked to the Liberty’s detriment of my assessing of their large puzzle.

[Digression:  Liberty Puzzles mini-review 

Liberty’s 510 piece How the West Was One puzzle

Liberty Puzzles was founded in 2005.  They were the first laser-cut puzzle-maker in North America, giving the company a big head start on this continent. Unlike the even earlier Wentworth laser-cut puzzle company in England, whose house style is modeled after the “Victory” brand’s hyper-efficient factory hand-cutting of the 1930s, Liberty drew its design inspiration from the much more expensive intricately cut puzzles made in that same era by the Jones family of Chagrin, Ohio. The result is that Liberty’s figural pieces still tend to be more elaborate than those in Wentworth puzzles, and their interlocking non-whimsy pieces are much more graceful and flowing.

Liberty is by far the largest and best-known laser-cut puzzle-maker in North America and many people are used to thinking of their puzzles as being the finest. North American laser-cut puzzle-makers have mostly tended to follow Liberty’s example, emulating both the free-form cutting style and range of image selection of that very successful company.  (As I mentioned in my last review, Jasen Robillard originally founded StumpCraft to be the “north of 49” version of Liberty.) 

I have long intended to get a Liberty puzzle, if for no other reason than to see whether I should use it instead of StumpCraft as my standard for excellence since the company is familiar to more people. I don’t have time now to write a full Liberty review now so this is a just a “stub”.  I’ll write a more complete essay about the company after I get experience with a few more of their puzzles.

This puzzle’s image is a painting by Chris Huang, whose studio is in the same town as Liberty’s factory.  I really like the stylized abstraction of the grass (or at least, what I read as grass) and bushes in the foreground. As the image developed during assembly the painting gave me much to ponder. Is this a landscape or a portrait?  The stately, solitary bison is the only element of the image that is depicted in a realistic way rather than as a stylized pattern.  Does that relate to the pun in the painting’s name – How the West Was One?  (I have just completed watching a Ken Burns documentary called The American Buffalo and have learned what an iconic animal the buffalo is for both the US and for the North American prairies.)

The painting features a lot of undoubtedly-meaningful symbolism, but most of it is beyond my comprehension. For example, there are seven suns in the sky. Why? And how can there be darkness and stars in the sky at the same time as all those suns? Those questions are not a criticism of the painting. Perhaps fine art should draw you in with ambiguities and mysteries. In fact, if I can understand a painting that might be a sure sign that it doesn’t qualify as fine art.  

Multi-piece whimsies from How the West Was One.  Regular-size StumpCraft puzzles always have this type of cutting feature too.  Discovering treats like this is something that I missed in mini-puzzles.

The quality of the cutting design for How the West Was One lives up to the company’s reputation. This puzzle proved to be one of the more challenging and engaging ones that I have done.  (It is unfortunate that Liberty doesn’t identify its designers so I can give a proper attribution to the puzzle’s creator.) All of the single- and multi-piece figural pieces perfectly suite the image, and like in the image some are symbols that I did not understand.  As with StumpCraft puzzles, the non-whimsy pieces in this puzzle are quite attractive and entertaining in their own right.  

The printing is also high quality - sharp and with rich vibrant colours - but it is printed on paper which (as you know!) is not my favourite method. That is one of the reasons that I said that doing StumpCraft’s UV printed-on-wood puzzles side-by-side with this one put Liberty at a disadvantage. Another is that this puzzle is what Americans commonly call ¼” thick plywood, but which really is only 5mm thick.  It is also relatively lightweight poplar-cored 3ply.  StumpCraft puzzles are made from heavier MDF and are an honest ¼” thick (about 6mm.)   

When I assemble puzzles by themselves, 5mm thick plywood gives a very satisfactory tactile experience that is hardly distinguishable from when I assemble 6mm thick ones.  But interspersing assembly of this puzzle with ones made from thicker, heavier wood really drew my attention to appreciating the rich appearance and luxurious feel of the StumpCraft pieces.  Yes, the edges and back of the Liberty puzzle did look better, but in this case the aesthetics of the added heft clearly won out.  End of digression.]

Three puzzles mixed together to become one bigger challenge.

Another capability of mini-puzzles is that you can mix the pieces from multiple puzzles together to make a bigger challenge.  That also worked well.  In fact, it worked better than when I did the same thing with two vintage puzzles. That time, even though both puzzles were made by the same company and had images by the same artist they had recognizably different cutting styles and their images had scale differences. Once I became attuned to that it helped me to recognize which pieces went with which puzzle.  With these StumpCraft minis the pieces from different puzzles were so similar that I did not have such clues. 

I didn’t try to use these puzzles for speed holding contests but I don’t doubt that they would work well for that sort of a game.  They are variously rated by StumpCraft as being 1, 2, or 3 out of five on their pine-tree difficulty scale, and those ratings as well as the puzzles’ differing piece-counts could be used for handicapping.  But actually the differences in degree of challenge between these nine puzzles did not seem to be that pronounced to me.

Review conclusions

When I began to do wooden jigsaw puzzles almost two years ago now I experimented with various sizes of puzzles from 250 pieces on up.  I found that the 250 piece ones got to feeling too small for me compared to 350 to 500 piece ones. I developed a bit of a snobbish attitude that bigger is better (up to the point where they become too big for my skill level or the size of my table.) 

Since I am retired the amount of time it takes to complete full size puzzles is not really a issue. In fact, a slow leisurely assembly is what I usually want. Doing this mini-puzzle binge has taught me that small puzzles have some very attractive features and advantages for certain circumstances.

There are times when I like getting a boost from comparatively rapid puzzling and success. That is what these mini-puzzles deliver. That could be as a bit of quick puzzle-time when I don’t feel in the mood to begin a large puzzle, or as a break while stuck during assembly of a large challenging puzzle.  They are also probably much better than large puzzles for introducing other people to why these expensive wood jigsaw puzzles appeal to me more than the much-less-expensive cardboard ones.

I can’t really say that I now prefer mini-puzzles to larger ones.  My favourite puzzles have still been in the 350-600 piece range.  From an art appreciation perspective I much prefer discovering the larger images that emerge on my puzzle-board, and from a puzzle assembly viewpoint I usually prefer the bigger challenge they present. I think that I have learned patience from their stately pace of assembly. But mini-puzzles certainly have niche roles and StumpCraft’s high-quality minis can be counted on to reliably fill those roles.