When it come to beautiful, well-made jigsaw puzzles, few companies have been able to match the quality of Ravensburger puzzles. The pieces are cleanly cut, unique, and made of thick, linen-finished, glare-free cardboard stock. The prints are vividly colored and in sharp focus. And the adult puzzle collection ranges from 300 to 32,000 pieces.
Ravensburger uses what it calls its “Softclick-Technology” to guarantee a “100% interlocking mechanism for the world’s most optimal fit of individually formed puzzle pieces, resulting in an absolutely smooth puzzle.” Instead of snapping together, pieces fit so well that they seem to glide into each other, effortlessly. And there’s no denying that the experience of putting a Ravensburger puzzle together is satisfying and rewarding.
But the fun of putting together a good jigsaw puzzle is only somewhat dependent on any of those factors. Often, the image itself – the detail, the complexity, the variety – is what determines how challenging the experience will be, and how fun.
The Vintage Flora puzzle is a very good example of a puzzle that is especially pleasing to solve, and just challenging enough to keep you going until you’ve placed the very last piece. Notice that the puzzle is divided into 24 squares, each (except for the last) devoted to a different letter of the alphabet, each with a different and highly textured background, each with its own border. For those of us who like to put the edges of a puzzle together before we fill in the rest, solving Vintage Flora is very close to an apotheosis.
Though we recommend Vintage Flora especially to the casual puzzle solver, the quality of the image and design makes it something that anyone who likes a good puzzle would appreciate.