A puzzle competition for serious puzzle enthusiasts!

Calling all puzzle enthusiasts – Mainland Cheese have asked us to spread the word - have they got something for you! Tell them who you’d recruit to help you finish this masterpiece, and you’re in the draw to win a Mainland 2,000-piece voucher. It’s simple; finish the puzzle, redeem the voucher – and an incredible prize will be yours. Like our site, and then visit their Facebook site to enter.

Does doing puzzles really make people happy?

It certainly does! Assembling a puzzle can truly bring happiness. Searching, finding and assembling and ultimately seeing the puzzle come together is what most people find fascinating.
Our recommendations:

Abundant Blooms

Bottlecap Hills

Irrfan Khan's Plan To Kickstart 2018 Will Leave You 'Puzzle-D'

Irrfan Khan's next Hollywood project 'Puzzle' to be a part of Sundance film festival's world premiere.

The movie centres on a forty something suburban mother whose world is consumed with caring for the men in her family. When she discovers she has a gift for assembling puzzles, her world begins to open and her entire family is forced to adjust and grow as well.

Read about it here

Now, this is the perfect job for a puzzle enthusiast!!

If you're the kind of person who's working on a puzzle at all times (not just on rainy days when you're stuck at home), the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York is looking to hire a full time  "Puzzle Cataloger" for six months. 

The museum has a collection of 7,500 puzzles from as late as the 1700s — and some of them have missing pieces. The person who gets hired wouldn't complete every puzzle, but rather would do as much of the puzzle as possible to identify the historic image in order to catalog it properly.

Such Fun!  Read more about it here.

WASGIJ Christmas 12 The Great Turn On

This new WASGIJ puzzle is now available. The Christmas market goers are ready for the festive lights to be turned on, but they appear to have frozen in their tracks from something further down the street – but what could it be?

WASGIJ Christmas 12 The Great Turn On

3D puzzles are the best!!

These puzzles feature a large variety of landmarks and are bound to be a hit with kids and adults alike. These 500 piece puzzles are easy to assemble, with a guide on the cover to help younger kids and cool 3D effects for the older generation. Everyone will just love them!

London 500 pieces

New York  500 pieces

Puzzle Power - How jigsaws help make sense of our life.

Jigsaw puzzles are hardly anything new, having been around since the 1700s and evolving from hand-cut, wooden educational tools to a sprawling industry that targets children and adults alike, and contrary to popular belief, this simple toy can have lasting benefits on our health and well-being. Read the rest of this fascinating article from the Daily Sabah  here  

Test your brain with jigsaw puzzles

Solving jigsaw puzzles can give you a sense of accomplishment like no other. It is a fun and rewarding hobby to pursue and it helps you in so many ways - helps pass time, aids logical and creative thinking, for relaxation, a memory booster - to name a few. Give it a go today.  www.pathwaypuzzles.co.nz

Kansas USA 1000 pieces

African Elephants 500 pieces

A new puzzle company: Brown Owl puzzles

Jason Tanner and his wife Allison, from Ottawa Canada,  have just launched Bone Owl Puzzles aiming to make jigsaw puzzles from artists work.  They are starting initially with five unique designs.

Tanner said he and his wife have always enjoyed puzzles and noticed an upsurge in interest recently.

“There are very few jigsaw puzzle companies out there that actually take an art-first kind of approach,” he said.

He said the standard in the industry is to use stock images and pay artists only a small percentage for their work and they wanted to do something different.

“Most jigsaw puzzle companies use repurposed art from big multimedia companies,” he said. “We’re paying artists upfront for their time and effort.”

Tanner is getting the business off the ground with a $10,000 drive on Kickstarter. He said this will give them the funding they needed to do an additional run with five artists.

“Kickstarter is an excellent place to launch creative projects. It introduces it to a lot of people who may not have heard about it.”

He said they have to do a large run off the bat, which is also what makes the Kickstarter campaign important.

The artists for the puzzles were given only a modicum of direction, because they wanted unconventional designs on the puzzles.

“We provided the requirements for what makes a good jigsaw puzzle and they basically ran with it,” he said, adding you need lots of detail in a puzzle and no big open spaces.

He said all of the artists they approached jumped right on board the project, because this is something they wanted to do and in many cases didn’t know how.  

We wish Jason and his wife well in their new venture.

Jason and Allison Tanner

Bone Owl Puzzle

Beautiful shaped puzzles

An amazing puzzler, Cathy, has sent us these photos of her completed puzzles. Aren't they amazing!
Well done Cathy!

Tutankhanum’s Mask   1000 pieces

Bath Time 1000 pieces

Wildlife 33,600 piece puzzle turned into a stop motion video

"Wildlife" is a very big jigsaw puzzle, clocking in at 33,600 pieces.  It is one of  the largest jigsaw puzzles in the world, and is manufactured by Educa. But if you think it's hard enough to do on its own, imagine turning it into a stop motion movie of classic video games while you assemble it.

This video turns each quarter of the puzzle into an active game of Tetris, Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Mario. Took over 400 hours to assemble and 400 hours to do the stop motion.
Wow!  This is certainly amazing.

Mother's Day is coming

Its time to start thinking about Mother's Day, 14 May.  Not only would Mum love a puzzle, but she would also love your help with doing it. Puzzles are such family fun!

Colour your Heart 1000 pieces

Vintage Collage  1000 pieces

Crafts with puzzle pieces

There is nothing more infuriating than to finish a puzzle and find a piece or pieces missing.  We are often asked, what can we do with incomplete puzzles?  If you cant bear to throw them away, then re-purpose the pieces making all sorts of crafty things.  In this video you are shown how to make a number of  different items from snow flake Christmas ornaments to greeting cards.  So, come on crafters - get puzzle crafty!

Puzzles for crafters

If you love hand crafts, you will love these puzzles!

Grandma's Craft Shed  1000 pieces

Crafters Corner  1000 pieces

Gardening Birds  1000 pieces