The Frumplingtons

We’ve had our heads in the clouds for most of the past week; to be more specific, the clouds over Brooklyn. It’s all Carol Dyer’s fault. Her picture, ‘Market days on Fulton Street‘, which some bright spark decided to turn into a 1500-piece whopper of a jigsaw puzzle, just happens to have a few dozen square feet of sky at the top (well, where else would it be?) and we’re not keen on big acreages of sky. Shana, however, persisted and got the thing finished, ignoring all my suggestions about doing only part of the sky and photoshopping the rest. (And I thought I was a technophobe!)

It’s a wonder that Shana got anywhere near finishing the puzzle at all, though, because sometime last Wednesday morning, while completing the back end of the fruit ‘n’ veg seller’s horse, Shana nearly died of fright.

I thought it was all my fault at first. All I’d done was come from the living room into the library to show Shana a picture of a flower I’d done on the Etch A Sketch. The way she shrieked (and especially the way she leaped from a seated position to about two feet in the air without the aid of rocket propulsion) you’d have thought I’d recreated Constable’s Haywain or something. I never realised I could have such an effect.

As I soon discovered, though, I hadn’t caused anything. The real reason for Shana’s sudden turn of energy was the spider who, at that very moment, was pulling himself up over the edge of the jigsaw box; the box from which, only seconds before, Shana had been choosing suitable pieces for her part of the puzzle.

Being the token man of the house, I, naturally enough, immediately took charge of the situation. From my vantage point, perched on tippy-toe high on another chair safe out of harm’s — and arachnids’ — way, I talked Shana through the fetching of a coffee jar (always kept on the kitchen windowsill in case of such emergencies), the placing of the jar over Spidey, and the final desperate slinging of both spider and jar out of the front door in the manner of an Australian fast bowler, and to heck with it if anyone chanced to be standing within range of either.

I came down off my chair by Friday. Well, I had to. Blog post to write about it, hadn’t I?

A farmer is enjoying a quiet pint outside a country pub, while a pig sits next to him eating a packet of crisps. Further along the road, accompanied by a sheep and a sheepdog, another farmer waits by a gate until it’s safe to cross the road. He might have a long wait ahead of him, though, because a middle-aged lady in a big hat festooned with flowers is trundling along in a little blue Morris Minor. She’s driving so slowly, even a snail has time to get out of her way. The car’s number plate — MPH 15 — gives a clue as to how low her speed actually is.

Three further clues on the back of the box will help you to complete the rest of this Wasgij puzzle, our first venture into a more difficult kind of puzzle. The way to approach a Wasgij is to put yourself into someone else’s shoes and try to imagine what their view might be. In this puzzle, ‘Sunday Drivers’, that someone is the driver of an oncoming horse and cart.

What the cart driver is facing [Warning: possible spoilers ahead] READ MORE >>

What a stroke of luck! We finished a jigsaw puzzle late on Sunday evening, leaving ourselves plenty of time to take a few photos and get them uploaded to our puzzle gallery on Monday afternoon and — most importantly of all — enabling me to use a corny old pun as a post title.

This was the hardest puzzle we’d done for a long time. It’s all very well knowing where countries are and being able to reel off long lists of capital cities, but when the writing on both the box lid and the puzzle pieces is not only small but also in italic script, one must resort to desperate measures — which is why I had my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass to hand all last week.

Around the edges of the map are scenes from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. The whole world, it seems, is full of wild animals and even wilder people. The oceans are no safer: they’re teeming with giant fish, big enough to swallow a ship whole, me hearties (says the tardy blogger, hoping to make up for missing last week’s ‘Talk like a pirate‘ day). For the scientifically inclined, the map also includes a zodiac and one of those armillarillarial — oh, to heck with it! — hooped spheres. Just think how much fun you could have rolling one of them over the edge of the flat Earth.

Eh? The Earth’s not flat? Get away! You’re pulling my leg! Who is this Galileo geezer anyway?

‘Passing barges’ by Gary Cartwright shows a pair of brightly painted narrowboats in Lincoln.

When the picture was first painted is something we’re still trying to find out. The artist might have painted it in the 1990s, using old photographs as inspiration; or he could have created it in the 1890s. The funnels indicate that the barges are steam-powered, so presumably the setting is late Victorian at the earliest. Barges do still pass through Lincoln, but these days they usually run on diesel. A few other things have changed since the picture was painted. For a start, the council have mended the fence. Oh and they’ve changed some of the riverside illumination; gone and put that new-fangled electric lighting in, so they have. It’ll never catch on, you mark my words.

A bigger version of above pic now available for viewing at our jigsaw gallery.

Ten minutes ago, we got started with a new puzzle: a historical map of the world. As Shana observed: “Today, Lincoln: tomorrow, the world!” Yes, but what then? Not, I hope, a detailed chart of the stars in the northern hemisphere. You can just imagine that, can’t you? — “I’ve got a piece of sky here,”…”Oh, what a coincidence. So have I.” No, I think I’ll pass on that, if you don’t mind.

Boats have played a large part in a couple of our recent puzzles. We’re currently half way through a picture of two barges in the centre of Lincoln, but early last week we were finishing Carol Dyer’s picture, ‘Annapolis Street Festival’, which features a boat named Pride of Annapolis, a boat which, as amateur vexillologists, we found more than a little intriguing.

I bet I know what you’re saying now:

Amateur vexi-what-ogists?

(All right, all right, it just means flag enthusiasts — but you can call us ‘anoraks‘.)

Flags have special meanings when they’re displayed on boats. Hoist lots of flags all at the same time and you can spell out messages both to other boaters and also to landlubbers like us. But try to decipher the flags on Pride of Annapolis and you’ll be left scratching your head in puzzlement, because here, according to the trusty Wikipedia guide to maritime signal flags, is what the Pride’s flags mean:

R-T-D-Y-N-Z-U

Which can mean only one thing:

Dictionary overboard!

Secondhand jigsaw puzzles never come with guarantees of being complete. Even so, of the twenty-odd puzzles that we have bought this year, only a couple have had missing pieces. The ‘Historical Map of England and Wales’ puzzle, which we finished this weekend, had, out of 500 pieces, only about one quarter of a missing piece, although it was in a strange place — Tintagel, which just happens to be the reputed birthplace of the legendary King Arthur.

Could the missing piece, I wonder, indicate the presence of some kind of quasi-metaphysical vortex, perhaps a portal to another world, in the Tintagel area? And might this mean that the Knights of the Round Table are preparing to arise from their long sleep, in readiness for the battle to save Britain from imminent peril — i.e., the collapse of the housing market and the widely predicted twenty years of economic recession? Or have I been reading too much fantasy fiction?

The 2008 Ryder Cup will start in just over a week. I’m not sure who is organizing it, but I hope it isn’t Gerold Como — at least, not if his Comic Golf picture is anything to go by. We’ve spent the past few days piecing together the jigsaw version of what is, in effect, Gerold Como’s idea of a fun day on the golf course, and it involves lots of accidents, pratfalls and generally silly behaviour. Who in their right mind, for example, would take a tractor and plough up one of the greens? What sort of idiot would lean over the edge of a cliff, hanging by one leg from a wooden fence, simply in the hope of getting a birdie? And who on earth would walk down the fairway pulling behind them not a golf trolley but a little dog on wheels? The answer to all the above is: only a character in a Gerold Como painting. Frankly, the man’s a genius!

See more Gerold Como jigsaw pictures over on our jigsaw puzzle site. (Go and see the original comic golf picture, too, at Gerold Como’s own site.) The bunker, in the bottom left hand corner of the picture, looks like a big fish, complete with dorsal fin. At least, that’s what I think. Is it just me?

After a couple of false starts, one involving a dull brown picture of Chester and the other being not entirely unconnected to a — gulp! — 3D puzzle, we have finally managed something bigger than a 1000-piece jigsaw. Yesterday, we finished Michael Young’s picture of a dress shop, called ‘Ladies Ready to Wear’. (Yes, I know there should be one of those ‘postrophy thingies after the ’s’ of ‘Ladies’; after all, it’s the dresses that are ready to wear, not the ladies themselves. But I don’t make up the puzzle titles: I just copy them down.) It’s a fun picture, full of pampering, preening and posturing — oh, and lots of silly hats.

The puzzle was a 1500-piece whopper, and we took six days to finish it (working in shifts, of course). On the seventh day — i.e., today — we rested. After all, I think we deserved a break. Don’t you?

[More pics of ready-to-wear ladies on our jigsaw gallery.]

A little Thelwell puzzle with only 400 pieces has been a refreshing change for us from those intimidating 1000-piece jigsaw leviathans we usually tackle. It’s about 34-years-old, but although some of the pieces have faded a bit, the picture itself — a scene of children playing in and around a river — has lost none of its charm. Who cares if it doesn’t have any of Thelwell’s horses in it — there’s enough action in the picture already. One group of kids has caught a huge fish and are heaving on their lines as they try to bring it in to land; the look of alarm on their pet dog’s face is priceless. Another youngster is having just as much trouble trying to catch a minnow. And one unfortunate angler has caught a crayfish. Not surprisingly, he jumps back as the crazy crustacean snaps at him.

Other children in the picture are either splashing about, diving off the bridge, or catching frogs in jam jars. Here’s a good tip, though: do the old Spot the Ball trick and try to work out which direction all these kids are looking. That’s right: none of them are looking at us, the viewer. They’re all too busy doing their own thing. But there is one pair of eyes trained upon us, connecting directly with us; one big beefy brain that’s working overtime trying to work out not where everyone’s looking, but who to chase first. He’s just over the fence. Have you spotted him yet? I won’t give it away if you haven’t. But when you do, here’s a bit of advice:

Run!!!

[More Thelwell jigsaw puzzle pictures at our jigsaw puzzle page.]

If young Polish-American Harry Wysocki hadn’t been ill in 1950, we might not have been doing this jigsaw picture of Thicketberry Cove this week.

Harry Wysocki didn’t paint the picture: his brother Charles did. But in 1950 Charles Wysocki was all set to join the fighting in the Korean War. At the last minute, however, he was granted leave to visit Harry, and was afterwards sent to do his two years’ National Service in Germany instead — a much safer posting!

After serving in Germany, Charles Wysocki became a full-time artist. He built up a successful commercial career, but decided to concentrate on his preferred ‘Americana’ or folk-art style from the late 1960s onwards.

Charles Wysocki artwork is unmistakable and you can buy it in all sorts of forms, including prints, wall hangings and calendars, so there’s no excuse for not having some Wysocki in your house. You can even buy Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzles — if, of course, you like that sort of thing…