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La Fiesta del Puzzle, by Alejandro Darias

Many things were different before the Internet changed our lives. If you are over 50, you probably had to write your college essays on a typewriter. If you happened to like jigsaw puzzles, you probably didn’t know any real person around you with the same hobby. As a consequence, most puzzle fans were quite alone and unable to share their passion with anyone. In those times, the book La Fiesta del Puzzle would have been impossible. Then the Internet was born, filling every vacuum of human interest. Several online forums about puzzles appeared in different countries and in different languages. These forums gathered the disperse puzzle population around online communities. They later formed legal associations, organized competitions, and published puzzle journals for their members. The puzzle world has bloomed in the last 15 years. It was about time that someone would put all that information together and tell us the story. That’s exactly what Alejandro Darias Mateos has done. He has written and published La Fiesta del Puzzle (The Puzzle Party). It is a book about puzzles and about people that like puzzles. It is the only book in Spanish on this...

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750, Art, Ravensburger

750, Ravensburger, The Wedding Tour, Moritz von Schwind

There are two main reasons why I like Ravensburger puzzles, apart from the image of the puzzle itself. One of them is the matte finish of their pieces. They show a distinctive texture that I prefer over other brands that tend to have glossy surfaces. That matte finish is also common in Clementoni puzzles. The other reason is the excellent quality of the pieces and the way the poster is glued to the cardboard. It is not uncommon to find a 50 year old used copy, like the Wedding Tour, and enjoy a jigsaw puzzle that looks like new. The preference for matte finish is quite a personal choice. They say that in matters of taste there can be no disputes (de gustibus non est disputandum). However, I think most puzzle fans would agree on the excellent quality of old Ravensburger puzzles. In fact, they even tend to weigh more than most other brands. That means that the cardboard used is more dense or thicker. A puzzle by Ravensburger will normally be heavier than most other brands, with perhaps the exception of Jumbo and some old MB puzzles that...

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