Pencil Pushers Puzzle 
by Guest Writer Roberta Shore

We invite you to read Roberta Shore's review on the following jigsaw puzzle. Since she has discovered the advantages of jigsaw puzzling, she has reviewed/journaled several that will be available on this website. 
Pencil Pushers Puzzle Springbok Random Cut 1000 Pieces Finished Dimensions: 24” x 30”

Pencil Pushers Puzzle - Roberta's Review

Roberta-Profile
Pencil Pushers Puzzle Springbok Random Cut 1000 Pieces Finished Dimensions: 24” x 30”

Pencil Pushers Puzzle

Springbok
Random Cut
1000 Pieces
Finished Dimensions: 24” x 30”

My Confident Puzzler Difficulty Rating: Medium to Hard

This puzzle was challenging. Not because of the illustration, but because of the . . .

Quality: Unforgivable issues with the piece condition. Some were damaged with splitting tabs.That wasn’t the worst of it. The pieces had rough edges. I had to push virtually every piece in place and mash it down and squish it together with its neighbors to fit it properly. The bottom of the box is less than sturdy. There was a lot of puzzle dust. Many sets of pieces, in one instance 6, were cut through just enough to get them apart, but still together in the bag. The full illustration is on the box top. Inside was a sealed bag of pieces; no poster was included. Color match illustration to pieces was okay. There were no false fits. No pieces were missing.

Getting started: Find the edge pieces and sort by color. I sorted the pencils by color group (6, 1, 5, 4, 4, 2), sub sorting out the sharpened ends of each group. I also sorted the grayish area under the pencil points, and the pencils’ corresponding colored watery areas beneath that.

Construction: I built the frame first. It offered so much color information to get started. I built the puzzle by color groups from the top down. I found the most challenging part to be the watery sections.

Final thoughts: I think this puzzle would be hard for a new puzzler. I certainly didn’t think it was easy. If the quality had been perfect, I would still say medium difficulty is a fair rating. I also think my sorting would have made this a very comfortable build in terms of seeing progress. And, the bottom half of the puzzle was tricky and would take extra patience even if all else was perfect. But it wasn’t. The joy of puzzling was lost to the quality issues described above. Sheer determination kept me from boxing it up. If I try to put a positive spin on this experience it would be a double dose of achievement, one for completing a somewhat challenging puzzle, and another for my will to keep going!

This is the 8th Springbok puzzle I have built. One had a missing piece, another (sold under their secondary brand, Majestic) had similar quality issues regarding the pieces. Three out of eight, not a great track record, but I really enjoyed the other five. Springbok is an old established company with a pretty high rating. I had to review my experience, but stuff happens. I cannot discount the brand.

My grades: Quality B-. Fun Factor C+, could have been A

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR - With her self-published book and  over 300 jigsaw puzzle reviews,  Linda has established herself as a prominent social media marketing influencer and jigsaw puzzle-preneur.  If you want to send Linda a quick message, visit her contact page here.

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