Sweet Squirrel 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.
Sweet Squirrel Heye Ribbon Cut 1000 pieces Finished Dimensions: 27.6 x 19.7

Sweet Squirrel Jigsaw Puzzle - Roberta's Review

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Sweet Squirrel Heye Ribbon Cut 1000 pieces Finished Dimensions: 27.6 x 19.7

Sweet Squirrel

Heye
Ribbon Cut
1000 pieces
Finished Dimensions: 27.6 x 19.7

Sweet Squirrel Heye Ribbon Cut 1000 pieces Finished Dimensions: 27.6 x 19.7

My (advancing) Newbie Difficulty Level: Moderate to Advanced (see explanation)

Such a cute illustration! When I purchased this puzzle I knew I would wait to do it until I felt more practiced at puzzling. At best, not counting the flowers and face features, there were only 3 or 4 colors (counting light and dark brown) - yikes! As for the difficulty levels - to me it depends on what you think makes a puzzle advanced. For me, a “busy” puzzle is much more difficult than the time consuming activity of completing large areas of similar colors. If you rate it by time spent, I suppose advanced would describe this puzzle. I never felt overwhelmed. Not easy, but moderate for me. I actually truly enjoyed almost every aspect of piecing this together. More on that a bit later.

Getting started: I sorted out the edge pieces while doing a general sort for color. I did not do the entire frame first; instead I only connected the bottom edge. I wanted to see some progress before attempting that time consuming task where every piece was a shade of the same color. So, I decided to build up from the bottom. I did sub sort as much details as possible - the ears, the flowers, the leaves, the tail texture, the dark face hair, the light face hair, the whiskers, the face features, and the frame pieces that had color on them.

The navy blue was already sorted and the base of the squirrel’s shirt was on the frame, so that was a great place to start. I sorted the blue pieces by shade and shape and off I went. Yes, it took a long time but each piece that went in place was so satisfying. I did use the box pic (see following list #1) during the build. I left the frame until there were only background pieces, sub sorted them all by shade, built the frame, and started filling in what was left. Much to my surprise, I completed this puzzle in less time than I estimated, and even faster than some other 1000 piece puzzles I’ve done!

The aspects that were not so satisfying:

  1. The lower corner of the box pic was covered with a large sign “Floral Friends”, there are 3 in the series, by the way. The 1000 piece Panda is equally adorable, has less background, a huge white face, flowers, and a pink floral shirt. The 500 piece Hedgehog is not so cute. Anyway, the sign hid the artists name and other pic details. No poster is included in the oversized box. I took a screen shot of the online pic, enlarged it, printed it landscape on 2 pieces of letter size paper and taped it together. It was very helpful, as it also more clearly showed the unusual location of the copyright info.
  2. Piece fit — I am a broken record on the topic. It seems to be a possible issue across many brands. It was an issue, as well, in the previous Heye puzzle I did. But this was the worst. Things that were already together would come apart unless new pieces were added gingerly. There was no hope a pieced section could be picked up and moved into place. I’m sure you know the slide paper under it trick, the pieces fell apart trying to slide it off. AARRGGHH!!
  3. There is a sheen on the pieces that made working on the puzzle in room light, as opposed to daylight, almost useless. In daylight the shading was so much easier to distinguish.
  4. Two nerve-wracking moments when I had to rearrange some frame pieces, and consequently some other pieces, to finish filling in the background. After that, it was even more exciting to see the puzzle finished. Certainly, I felt accomplished for the effort, but I was never aggravated by it. I can only repeat, this was fun from beginning to end!

Puzzle Quality: Aside from what I noted above, there was quite a bit of puzzle dust and one badly damaged piece. Otherwise, Box pic had a good piece color match. The pieces were sturdy, none were connected uncut, there was a fairly good mix of traditional shapes, but the majority were the 2 ins, 2 outs variety, and none were missing.

My ratings: Quality B, fun factor A+

Newbie hint: Sort the pieces by shape in trays or a on a manageably sized board, all going in the same direction, say horizontal. Then, when looking for a vertical piece, it is easy to turn the tray / board to improve perception. I found that so helpful with the background because of the shading. Yes, still a newbie. Still considering how I would sort a possible addition to my stash, still not choosing anything crazy difficult, still really slow. Maybe when I consider advancing to 1500 pieces I will have to graduate to intermediate puzzler, but the thought has not crossed my mind.

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