Jigsaw 18, Series 2

Rather a long time since I last reported completion of a jigsaw, but here we are now with another 99p job from the Oxfam shop at Ewell village.

Another Falcon de luxe, described this time as both fine art and nostalgia. But much the same sort of thing as jigsaw 16 of 12th June.

This one is a trimmed version of a splendidly garish painting by one John Macvicar Anderson, that well known painter from Glasgow who died in 1915. He died at the ripe old age of 80, so he must have made quite a good thing out of of it. You can have your own print of this painting for a mere $49.99 from http://www.allposters.com/, while the painting itself last went under the hammer in 2003, on which occasion it went for a little more than £125,000. Bit too strong for me. There is also the confusion of there being an architect of the same name. Is it the same person?

An easy going puzzle, but one on which I got off to rather a slow start. Pace, as seems to be usual, gradually increasing to a breathless finish late (for me) last night.

Edge first, then the skyline, a skyline which with all its ups and downs covered a lot of ground. Then the bridge line, then the buildings between. Then worked down over the water. Then worked up over the sky. Just one mistake along the way, a bit of sky which I put in the right place but the wrong way around. A lot easier than jigsaw 16, despite coming from the same part of the same stable. Nice positive feel to piece placement and I was only occasionally doubtful about whether some particular piece went in some particular hole or not. So much so that I was occasionally able to place a piece on the basis of a fit on just one side, rather than the much more usual two.

Easy to follow colour & feature coding. Then the gently waving horizontal cuts, just about visible in the illustration, made finding pieces from the heap a lot easier than it would otherwise have been: there being small pieces, wedge shaped pieces and large pieces. Quite unlike, in this respect the very straight jigsaw 15 of 19th May. But it does seem that all Falcon jigsaws have keys which help one crack the thing; so in this one wavy lines, in another some other wheeze. Is it all down to the taste of the die cutter? Were they real craftsmen, something after the way of a crossword puzzle compiler?

Mostly regular with exactly four pieces meeting at every interior vertex and with few if any pieces of the two-prong-two-hole variety.