Puzzling SNicKs

🐱 “Even the smallest feline is a masterpiece of nature.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci 🐈‍⬛ “Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein 🐈 “Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.” ~William S. Burroughs After another loooonnnnnggg hiatus, we finally got another puzzle together! We’re on vacation in Oregon, visiting Stan’s family, and we made sure we brought along a puzzle for us to do together. Since his family is a big fan of cats, this one seemed like the best choice. It was a really fun puzzle to put together. The pieces are sturdy and fit well, it had a nice matte surface, and the colors were bright and fun. There are a ton of cute little kitty scenes to enjoy! Catalina Hotel 🎨: Christina Young (@christinacyoung ) 🏭: Keymaster (@keymastergames ) 🧩: 1,000 ✅: 22 May 2025

🇺🇸 ”On balance, my life has been a constant stream of blessings rather than disappointments and failures and tragedies.” ~ President Jimmy Carter 🇺🇸 “In Plains [Georgia], I saw Jimmy Carter as he really is—a nice, decent man...in terms of compassionate contribution to society, he certainly has proven to be our best past president.” ~ Helen Thomas, journalist 🇺🇸 “America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.” ~ Carter This was a used puzzle that we got in West Virginia in April of 2023. It was so unique, we just had to get it, because when would we ever find another one like it? It wasn’t that long afterward that then-98-year-old President Jimmy Carter was placed in hospice care. Since he was close to the end of his life, we wanted to do this puzzle as soon as we could, so we could honor him when he passed away. Carter’s presidency was controversial, and it was a troubled time, and he only lasted through one term. The decades since then have been marked by many great acts of service, helping build homes with @habitatforhumanity , through his dedication to his church, teaching at @emoryuniversity , and in leadership roles helping to improve human rights around the world. President Jimmy Carter 1924-2024 Jimmy Carter 🎨: Octavio Ocampo 🏭: unknown; for the Carter Center 🧩: 513 ✅: 27 April 2023

♦️ “You are, at this moment, standing, right in the middle of your own ‘acres of diamonds.’” ~ Earl Nightingale 🔶 “To me, the crowd is the most wonderful thing in the whole world when it’s making noise.” ~ Vin Scully 🔷 “If you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy and colorful and lively.” ~ Mel Brooks After nearly seven months, we’re back with a new puzzle post! We’re going to return to regular posting, though it will be at a slower pace than before. It turns out that steadily creating content can become tiring, and last December, we had to step back and pursue other things. We have such a backlog of puzzles to put together, including a bunch of Cloudberries that we’d ordered when they had a killer sale, so it seemed right that we started with one of their snack puzzles. It was much easier than we expected it to be, so that was a plus. Also, we have a couple of new puzzle buddies! We haven’t named them yet. Crowdberries 🎨: A crowd of Cloudberries fans! 🏭: Cloudberries (@cloudberriesofficial ) 🧩: 500 ✅: 4 July 2024

We’re still here. We’ve just taken a little break from puzzling to do some other things we like. But don’t worry—we still have a TON of puzzles to do, so we’ll check in again soon.

🌇 “The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.” ~ Mary E. Pearson 🌉 I’ll send you a postcard, saying I’m alright On the back, that I’m in love with life I’ll send you a postcard, and sign my name in the stars ~ Jordin Sparks, “Postcard” 🌅 “Whenever I’m out of town for at least a week, I feel like I should write a postcard or something…you can be a genius, [but when] you try and write a postcard you come across like a moron anyway: ‘This city’s got big buildings. I like food. Bye.’” ~ Jim Gaffigan So this one took a lot longer than it should have, but not because it was particularly difficult. We just sort of found some other stuff to do. It’s kind of appropriate that the theme of this puzzle is travel and discovery, because one of our other activities has been to discover new planets in No Man’s Sky, which we just bought for our Switch. But as fun as that game is, we felt like we couldn’t leave this puzzle half finished, so we powered through and got it done late last night! Road Trip USA 🎨: various 🏭: Ravensburger (@ravensburgerglobal ) 🧩: 1,000 ✅: 14 December 2023

🎄 “Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.” ~ Charles M. Schulz 🐶 “The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.” ~ Charles de Gaulle 🎄 “Christmas is a season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.” ~ Washington Irving Just a quick snack puzzle for us to build, shoot, write the post and file it for later. It’s a second-tier Cobble Hill in terms of piece quality, but it still fits together well and the image is bright and crisp. We got this for $1 at a yard sale quite a few months ago, but we waited until the season was upon us to build it. It was enjoyable, but we’re not 100% sure we’ll save this one for the future. Christmas Puppies 🎨: Greg Giordano (@giordanostudios ) 🏭: Cobble Hill (@cobblehillpuzzles ) 🧩: 500 ✅: 2 December 2023

🪐 “Earth may appear insignificant in the whole Universe, but it is the most beautiful and significant planet.” ~ Sukant Ratnakar, Quantraz 🪐 “You heard about Pluto? That’s messed up, right?” ~ Burton “Gus” Guster, “Psych” (S1, E10) It’s another one from our stack of Four Point Puzzles, this one by far the biggest and most fun we’ve done so far. We still have their Mars and The Moon in the to-do pile, plus a few other non-planetary selections. We were really pleased about the quality of these round/shaped puzzles. They weren’t all to scale, of course, because even if Mercury would be one single, tiny piece, Jupiter wouldn’t fit on the table! And speaking of table size, there was no way we could fit all eight planets on our puzzle table at once without overlapping them, so we opted for shooting each one and collaging them in Photoshop. These were really fun, and we wish that Four Point Puzzles were still available, because we really recommend them! The Planets 📷: NASA (@nasa ) 🏭: Four Point Puzzles (defunct) (@fourpointpuzzles ) 🧩: 2,000 ✅: 26 November 2023

📨 “The President of today is just the postage stamp of tomorrow.” ~ Gracie Allen 💌 “I believe in opening mail once a month, whether it needs it or not.” ~ Bob Considine 📬 “When you control the mail, you control…INFORMATION.” ~ Newman, “Seinfeld” (S5 E6, “The Lip Reader”) This is the one. This is the puzzle that got us back into serious puzzling three years ago. Unlike a lot of puzzlers who got into it because of Covid sheltering, we just thought it had been awhile since we did a puzzle, and so we broke this one out of the storage box in the coat closet. While putting it together in 2020, that’s when we discovered that there are large groups of puzzlers on social media—diehards who always have one or more on the table, speed puzzlers, collectors of vintage puzzles, and so on. We were thrilled! We didn’t start taking pictures of our completed puzzles for a few months, so we knew that we wanted to redo this one eventually, just for posting. It was easier this time than before; our sorting techniques have improved from the old dig-around-in-the-box method, and there was still a residual familiarity with the layout. We plan on breaking this one out again, maybe in another three years’ time! Stamp Challenge (Challenge Series) 📷: Karen M. Romanko/USPS 🏭: Ravensburger (@ravensburgerglobal ) 🧩: 1,000 ✅: 20 November 2023

“Just what kind of puzzle are you doing, anyway?” #chex #chexpuzzle #200piececereal

🎄 “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” ~ Charles Dickens 🎄 “The best gifts to give: To your friend, loyalty; To your enemy, forgiveness; To your boss, service; To a child, a good example; To your parents, gratitude and devotion; To your mate, love and faithfulness; To all men and women, charity.” ~ Oren Arnold 🎄 “Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by givng to the mall of his choice.” ~ Dave Barry 🎄”It’s beginning to look a lot like crispness.” ~ Stan, every year on Black Fry Day🍟 Here’s a puzzle we picked up at Hobby Lobby a couple of years ago when they had a Christmas puzzle sale. After we bought it, we set it on the shelf, and then we bought other puzzles, and put them on the shelf, too. Then the Christmas season came and went, so we figured we’d wait to put this one together until the next Christmas, working around it all year long…and forgetting about it. Well, this year, we didn’t forget. This was a great quality, top-tier Cobble Hill puzzle. All of the pieces were sturdy and fit together perfectly. It was a fun image, which looked really good on the linen-finish surface. This one goes on the repeat shelf! ’Tis the Season 🎨: H. Hargrove (@hargrovestudio ) 🏭: Cobble Hill (@cobblehillpuzzles ) 🧩: 500 ✅: 16 November 2023

🎣 “There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.” ~ Steven Wright 🎣 “You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.” ~ Mitch Hedberg 🎣 “He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.” ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina We promise, we never intended to do four water/fish puzzles in a row. It really just worked out that way… 😋 Here’s yet another puzzle that we got in West Virginia. We’d never done a lenticular puzzle before, and it did seem a bit intimidating, what with the shifting image on the pieces. Evidently the original purchaser thought so, too, because the bag inside the box had never been opened! It turned out to be easier than we feared, though. It was a challenge to see what was on the pieces, but a little bit of turning back and forth in the light made it clearer. Vintage Fishing (Vintage 3D Collection) 🎨: Carolyn Grossman 🏭: Tracer Imaging (@tracer.imaging ) 🧩: 500 ✅: 16 November 2023

🐙 “Fishes light up the interior of the sea like fires.” ~ Anonymous 🐡 “The heart of man is very much like the sea; it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.” ~ Vincent van Gogh 🪸 “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you’ve been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.” ~ Dave Barry 🐠 Joy to the world All the boys and girls Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me ~ Hoyt Axton/Three Dog Night, “Joy to the World” Another quick snack puzzle that we both enjoyed immensely. It didn’t seem like it would go so quickly, but it was only 500 pieces, and it was a gradient design. This was, not surprisingly, top Ravensburger quality, with 100% perfect pieces. It was easy to separate pieces by color, which in turn were easy to assemble. Definitely another one for the save pile! Ocean (Circle of Colors series) 🎨: Asia Orlando (@asiaorlando_ ) 🏭: Ravensburger (@ravensburgerglobal ) 🧩: 500 ✅: 10 November 2023