When Good Intentions Go Bad

 

One afternoon while camping at Colorado Bend State Park, since I'd had, for the moment anyway, my fill of evening hikes last month at Caprock Canyons, so didn't have any other plans, I drug out this.

This is a very thoughtful birthday gift that I hadn't gotten to yet.

I had, and still don't, no idea what difficulty level 5A means, nor size A5 for that matter, but it looked to be about 100 pieces so should only take an hour or two.

Now the people that gave me this are not puzzlers so I'm sure they had no idea what they were getting me in to, but - well, you'll see - - -

I grabbed the puzzle and my serving tray, headed out to my chair under the canopy, and set myself down for some puzzling - then promptly got myself back up again and went back to The Van to grab a piece of paper when I realized that the back-side of the puzzle-pieces were almost the same color as my tray.

As you can see, the pieces are petitely sized (That's a polite way of saying they are REALLY FRIGGIN TINY!) with a variety of random shapes,

though, interestingly, hidden away in this jumbled mess are a variety of animal shapes.

In addition to this howling wolf there is a duck, a moose, a deer, - well you get the idea.

And buried away inside this menagerie is a sampling of ridiculously tiny butterflies, none of which, despite their near microscopic size, are interchangeable with each other.

Fortunately, because of their thickness, all the pieces - which are lazer-cut from 5mm 7ply plywood - are surprisingly robust despite their petiteness.

After procrastinating a while with important stuff like snack preparation, snack consumption, and river contemplation, I finally went to work.

Now different people have different puzzling strategies. The edge-builders, color separators, shape identifiers, all of which work just fine, but I'm a pick-n-sticker.

I pick up a piece, compare the color and pattern with the image, determine about where it goes in the puzzle, and drop it there. Eventually a couple of pieces will lock together, then groups will lock with groups, and - well, you get the idea.

Works great for me! Most the time - - - but with pieces this small and the abstract colors and patterns - - - well - - -

there may or may not have been a meltdown involved.

But hours later, more hours than planned for, I was able to leap up from my chair in triumph

and run whimpering for The Van's tool kit to get some duct-tape to put my eyeballs back into my head and hold them there until I recovered.

You know - on second-thought, I wonder if those gift-givers knew exactly what they were doing to me all along!   Nope - nope - let's give them the benefit of doubt - at least until I find some dastardly way to pay them back - - -