Section "B" Complete! - 2 of 8 sections done.

Well, we finally found enough time to get the 2nd section completed.  It's been sitting on the table, 99% complete, for almost 4 months waiting for me to finally fix the white border part to connect this section with the previous one.  Since this was the second section we were able to start using one of the best assembly techniques for these types of puzzles. That is building one section on top of another completed section.  Each section is a duplicate of the others with regard to the pieces.  So, when you build on top you can tell exactly the shape of the piece you are looking for.  When you couple this with a sorting process that sorts all the pieces by shape it makes finding the pieces very easy!  The pictures below illustrate these techniques. Look closely and you will see one section being built on top of the previous.

Section C is done.  We are doing B (to the left).

See how we built the yellow man right on top of the other section using the bottom piece shapes as a guide.

Look very closely and you will see the parts of the B section being built on top of the C section.

Sorting the pieces by shape is key.

More sorting.  Notice the two groups at the bottom.  They are the same shape but we found that you can divide them into those that run vertically or horizontally in the puzzle.  The ones that the bottom are slightly longer and narrower.

Just needs the white border to be completed.  This is basically where it sat for 4 months!!

Finally found the time to get it done.

Since our busy time of year is over we are now back in full puzzle mode.  This means that we will be working on completing the puzzle soon.  My goal is to try to have it finished by the end of June.  I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Section "B" Status

Hey everyone!  Sorry it's been a while since I've updated the blog but this is a very busy time of year for us.  We usually don't work on puzzles during this time of year since we don't have any extra time to work on them.

Section "B" (2 of 8) has been completed for well over a month now.  I just haven't had the time to put all the pictures together and post them all on this blog.  As it sits right now we are shuffling some pieces on the edge that connects "B" to "C".  Since they are all white and there are several duplicate shapes that can easily be in the wrong place so the two sections do not fit together right now.  Once this busy time is over, which should be in a few more weeks, we'll be able to finally get section "B" out of the way and start the next section.  At that point I think we'll finish the puzzle very quickly as it really isn't very hard.  Thanks for being patient.

Section "C" Complete! - 1 of 8 sections done.

Tonight we completed section "C" of the 32000 piece "Double Retrospect" puzzle. Start to finish it took us approx. 7 days to complete.  In actuality it took less than that because we had a trip to Arizona over the weekend. Sydney and Justin stayed behind and did a LOT of the work themselves. The next sections will go much faster (barring work and other events getting in the way) now that we have a piece shape reference to build on. Since each section has exactly the same piece shapes we can literally build each section on top of the other. It is a huge time saver. In fact, we found that within a section the left and right halves are also duplicates of each other. You'll see in the pictures below where we built one half of the section on top of the other.

Organizing the pieces is key

Top-left quadrant being built on top of the completed top-right quadrant

Knowing the shape of the piece you are looking for when building one section on top of another is really helpful

Only the white part left to do

Not only did we organize the white pieces by shape, we found all the duplicates and stacked them together

Section "C" Complete!

Let the fun begin!!!

We started building our first section of the puzzle at 7:00pm on Jan 5th, 2011.  

We decided to start with section "C" which is the third section on the top from the left.

Sorting colors took about an hour and the organizing of the pieces for the colors we choose to start on took about an hour.  We figure the first section will be the hardest since we don't have a piece pattern to work from.  The remaining sections will be a lot easier.

32000 piece "Double Retrospect" puzzle is in the house!!

The 32000 piece "Double Retrospect" puzzle arrived from Belgium today.  Took almost a month to get here.  It even came with a hand cart to move it around.

Oh well, I can't even start it yet as I have about 2600 more pieces of a section of the 18000 piece Skylines puzzle to finish first.

Waiting to start the newest largest puzzle in the world

A couple of months ago I learned that there was a new largest puzzle coming out by Ravensburger that is 32000 pieces.  It's called Double Retrospect and you can check it out here.

As far as I know it is currently not available for purchase in the USA but is supposed to be available in Feb 2011.  Instead of waiting I decided to order it and have it shipped here from Babylon Puzzles in Belgium.  I ordered it on Dec 9th, 2010 and as of today, Dec 31st, it is still not here.  Apparently major snow storms in Europe and the east coast of the US have caused huge delays in shipments.  So I'm waiting patiently for it to arrive so I can start on it.  I plan to document the build process on this blog so check back and see how we're doing.

In the mean time, I'll keep working on the 18000 piece Skylines puzzle I have going right now.

Happy New Year!!

LIFE: The Great Challenge - 24000 pieces

Hello, just wanted to write to say what a wonderful experience we had putting this puzzle together. My wife and I have done many large jigsaw puzzles over the years but this one was the most memorable. The puzzle measures 428cm x 157cm (4.28m x 1.57m) or 168.5in x 61.8in (14' .5" x 5' 1.8"). It comes in 4 separate bags of 6000 pieces each. We assembled it one section at a time but you can mix all the sections together if you want to. We received the puzzle in early May and started construction on Mother's Day (May 13th, 2007) and finished it on June 16th, 2007. It took us 34 days!! Working primarily after work and weekends, it took us approx 400 man hours to complete. That's 200 hours for each of us. According to the worldslargestpuzzle.com website we were the first to complete it. I highly recommend attempting this puzzle if you feel you are up to it. I have a website that documents the our construction with lots of pictures if your interested. www.aegroup.com/puzzle. Good Luck!