Galison 9780735373242 Mina Hamada Luna de Flor Round Jigsaw Puzzle, Vibrant Colors

This is a 1,000-piece circular puzzle by Galison. There is a beautifully printed poster, but it is smaller than box cover image. However the clarity of the design meant that this did not matter. This puzzle was cut with concentric circles of quasi rectangular pieces (the two alternatives are quasi-hexagonal pieces as used by Pomegranate or regular ribbon cut with a circular outline as used by Clementoni.) The puzzle diameter was 635mm and the average piece size 317mm2.Mina Hamada is a Japanese artist and muralist living in Barcelona. This artwork featured in Wynford Walls museum of international Street Art in Miami. This puzzle was a pleasure to work on. Even though the pieces, at 1.72mm thick, were thinner than the 2mm minimum for better quality jigsaws, the pieces fitted together well.There was good variation in piece shapes with the regular H shape (two tabs on one axis and two blanks on the perpendicular axis) making up just over 40% of the distribution in the non-random sample.Examination of a sample of 233 non-edge pieces gave the following distribution:H shape 95 41%L Shape 2 + 2 with each axis having one of each 25 11%Y shape (3 blanks and 1 tab)) 44 19%A shape (3 tabs and 1 blank) 37 12%Special piece with 5 tabs or blanks 27 12%Special piece with 6 tabs or blanks 1Special connector with one site smooth 4 2%This gave quite a good variety of pieces. However, there was almost no variation in connector geometry, meaning that misfits were possible (and at least one happened during assembly).Because this is a circular jigsaw with concentric rings of quasi-rectangular pieces, the number of piecesincreased with each ring away from the centre. To accommodate this, the makers use a number of special pieces with an extra tab or blank on the side away from the centre.The approach I took was to sort for the edge pieces, and for 11 different colours. I then worked through the colours to assemble the puzzle. One minor issue was that some pieces were narrow with a bottom connector. This meant that they were similar to the edge pieces and left me wondering if I had missed them out on assembly.This approach I took meant that I assembled the jigsaw in an irregular manner rather than smoothly building from the edges in.This was a very enjoyable puzzle to assemble with lots of little problems to solve. What was most satisfying was there, unlike most puzzles, there was no need to do a sort by piece shape as there were no large areas of the same colour. I give it a five out of five for enjoyability and it ranked as only about as difficult than a normal 1,000 piece puzzle, so 2 out of five for difficulty (the lack of a need for sorting by shape compensated to the extra complication of a circular puzzle)..

Absolutely loved making this. It’s a very clever piece of art. Beautiful to hang

Waste of time and money