My first Stave! courtesy of the Hoefnagle Club. “Soaring to New Heights” (2023, 145 pieces, 4 swords Teaser).
Well, Stave lives up to their reputation. Really challenging! I used a reference image of the solved puzzle to help me out whenever I was super stuck. The reference images … were not perfect matches with my puzzle. Because there are slightly different ways to solve? Or different photo quality? Or individual puzzles? Not sure. But, it was definitely helpful, while I started to figure out how to look at the different kinds of puzzle pieces. Looking forward to a different (easier) Stave to start putting these lessons into practice, without a reference image!
Sometimes there were several possible fits, with one being “better” rather than obviously it. … I really appreciated the simple body, which is smart puzzle design — give the puzzler something to succeed at, to get them hooked.
The pieces felt really nice in the hand, and I could see the hand-cutting. This puzzle — at $1100+ — would have been way beyond any conceivable budget I could come up with for puzzles, but, yeah, I get it.
