The same brand, Falcon de luxe, as jigsaw 15, but this one fine art by Alan Maley rather than a photograph. It seems that there are two people by this name in the internet world, one a prolific painter of paintings more or less like this one and the other a prolific educationalist. Amazon is full of his stuff. But I assume that you are unlikely to be so prolific in two so different trades and that the two Alans are indeed two different people, rather than facets of a single person with undiagnosed MPD, by which I do not mean myeloproliferative disorder. More on this point in due course.
Not only was this puzzle the second Falcon de luxe on the run, it was the second incomplete puzzle on the run, with this 18 by 28 puzzle only having 502 pieces rather than the requisite 504 (this despite it saying 500 on the box in clear white numerals). And it was from the very same Oxfam shop (for 99p) which is so firm that it does not want incomplete puzzles. Clearly the good ladies were having an off day and this puzzle will have to hit our black wheelie bin rather than theirs, a shame as I rather enjoyed it, despite the slow start and despite MPPD (missing piece paranoia disorder, see DSM-5, forthcoming) kicking in big-time for the middle period of the solution, it having become fairly clear that two edge pieces were indeed missing and were not hiding in unexpected colours or unexpected places. Unexpected colours being the point that failure to find a particular piece is usually the result of looking for the wrong piece: you think you are looking for a predominantly red piece (for example), when you should be looking for a predominantly blue piece. The moral of this point being that one should always take care to look at the image supplied with care; it is so easy with lack of care to jump to the wrong conclusion.
Started with the edge which I was unable to complete because of the missing pieces but which was otherwise OK. I was reasonably confident, which is not always the case, that the edge pieces which I did have were assembled correctly. But then the problems really kicked in with the brush style of the painting meaning that there were no clear edges to move onto, for example, no easy skyline. I thought the leading lady ought to be easy enough with her splash of distinctively striped colour, but this proved not to be the case and her dress was not finished until I was well through the solution. Rather I dotted about, doing a bit here and a bit there, with chunks of puzzle only slowly being joined up. Pieces did not fit until you had fitted them; their features did not match the image until they were in context. Excellently camouflaged. But eventually I completed the near scene, leaving the town at the back, middle left on the image, the smoke and the sky.
Finishing this part was as much a matter of size as shape or colour. If you look at the sky of jigsaw 15 you can see that the horizontal lines are indeed horizontal, straight across from left to right (or from right to left if you prefer). But those on this puzzle wave about and in this part of the puzzle there was a strong alternation between tall rows and short rows with it being easy to pick out the pieces belonging to the tall rows. The result of all this was that this two fifths of the puzzle by area was solved in perhaps a twentieth by time.
Just a few mistakes in the course of the solution, none of them causing significant bother.
Another absolutely regular puzzle with exactly four pieces meeting at every interior vertex and another puzzle without the prong-prong-hole-hole configuration. Perhaps if I do enough Falcon puzzles I will get to recognise the fists of their various die makers.
PS: just found an interesting piece about the artist who is clearly not the educator at all, after all, at http://www.davincisartandcoffee.com/victorian/about_alan_maley.htm.
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