Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Bepuzzled Murder Most Artful Jigsaw Murder Mystery with Story R. D. Zimmerman

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Jigsaw puzzles tend to run along the same basic concept.  You have an image split up in to tiny pieces.  There are a lot of different images out there and the puzzles vary in size from 10 pieces up to the thousands.  You don’t see a lot of innovation.  Yes, they had 3-D puzzles, which I bought and tried.  But I’ve never seen a jigsaw puzzle and thought, “Wow!  Now that’s a lot more interesting than your average puzzle!”

Many years ago, someone got me the Murder Most Artful jigsaw puzzle.  You’re given a story and a puzzle.  First, you read the story about an art forger found dead near a painting.  When you’re done, you put the puzzle together to see the painting that he was working on.  You have to use the story and the painting to figure out who did it.  Once you’ve figured it out or given up, you can read the solution on the last page.  (The solution is printed backwards, so you’ll need a mirror.)

I did the puzzle many years ago.  Even then, it wasn’t overly difficult to figure out.  The puzzle is 500  pieces, which wasn’t that difficult for me to put together.  When I did put it together, I don’t remember it taking me that long to figure out who did it.  (In case you want to do the puzzle, I won’t ruin it for you.)

Since putting the puzzle together is the first step in figuring out who did it, you don’t get a preview image of the puzzle.  This wasn’t really an issue.  I’ve done puzzles without a preview.  I was able to finish the puzzle before figuring it out.  However, I have to admit that you don’t really need the entire puzzle to get it.  In fact, it’s entirely possible that you’ll figure it out before the puzzle is finished.

Since the puzzle was so easy for me, I never really checked to see if the puzzle was part of a series.  Now that I’m dong the review, I did look.  It was hard to find stuff because of the name, but I was able to find at least one other puzzle that had an Alfred Hitchcock theme.

I don’t know that I’d recommend it, but I don’t think I’d recommend against getting it.  For someone that’s used to 1000+ pieces, this will by no means be a challenge for you.   The only thing it will provide is a little distraction.  I don’t do jigsaw puzzles much any more, but I don’t know if I’d get the other puzzle if I was.  I just wish Epinions had an ‘indifferent’ button for the recommendation.

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