Jigsaw 21, Series 2

Almost exactly two months since I last completed a jigsaw, that is since 23rd August. A long gap, given that I usually reckon on doing about one a fortnight.

A reckoning which is confirmed by searching the blog for 'series 2' and coming up with all 20 jigsaws of series 2, starting with swans on the 30th October 2012. A rate of two every five weeks, not so far off one a fortnight.

This one, breaking with tradition on account of it being a very proper sort of picture for a jigsaw, had 750 pieces, from Arrow Puzzles. A round £1, so not the Oxfam shop in Ewell village, but apart from that rather negative fact nothing more positive. And the 750 is a touch economical with the vérité, as the puzzle is 22 pieces high by 35 across, which my calculator makes 770, not 750. Plus one piece is missing, perhaps succumbing to the vacuum cleaner during its long sojourn in the jigsaurium.

Pieces all much of a muchness from the point of view of size, and mostly of the (most common) prong-hole-prong-hole configuration, but a rather irregular fit with plenty of instances of vertices with a meeting of just three pieces rather than four.

I found it a hard puzzle to get going with. Do I have some kind of a tipping point somewhere between 500 and 750 pieces at which execution time starts to exponentiate? It is not as if there were great swathes of featureless sky or sea to cope with.

Started with the edge in the usual way. Then the skyline, which in this case is not wholly satisfactory as it gets lost in the tree on the right, rather than sweeping right across. Then I floundered a bit. I thought the two edges of the tree on the right ought to be alright, but in the event struggled. More success with the buildings. Fiddled around, pushing down from the cottage onto the lawn and pushing up from the bottom into the pond - or perhaps it is a river.

Eventually the trunk of the tree was finished. This left the far bank of the pond. A hole to the left of the church, a hole to the right of the cottage and, last but by no means least, the sky and twigs top left. All this processed in the same order, with the sky and twigs being largely done by focusing on a particular bit of twig being in a particular position on the piece one was looking for. So not colour mix and not shape, but a reasonably effective technique nonetheless.

With a piece missing the puzzle cannot be recycled in Ewell Village and for some reason I am not inclined to keep it either - oddly, as I usually do. Rather, honourable burial in the compost heap..