So this morning I decided to begin sorting the mystery puzzle that Tom and Mercedes sent me.  As I said in the last post, I thought based on looking at the pieces visible through the ziplock bag that it might be a Thomas Kinkade puzzle, and soon after I opened the bag and started sorting pieces, I was completely positive it was.

I was not sure how many pieces the puzzle was as there’s no box or anything to give me a clue as to anything about the puzzle, but as I’m sorting through the pieces and putting them in smaller piles based on color and picture element, I start noticing two things:  1)  There’s a whole lot of white pieces, presumbably part of the sky; and 2) There seems to be a lot of edge pieces…perhaps the puzzle is bigger than I originally thought?  Hmmm…

Then a really funny thing happened – I started seeing edge pieces that had Thomas Kinkade’s name on it.  Great!  Let me put those together real quick as that will be easy to figure out, right?  WRONG!!!!!  Here’s why:

Do you notice something odd with this picture?

Notice anything amiss here?  Well, every puzzle I’ve ever seen, other than a round one, has 4 corners on it….how many corner pieces do you see here?  Certainly a LOT more than 4 that’s for sure….LOL  Plus, another big clue that something’s not quite right is the fact that there are three separate sections with Thomas Kinkade’s name.  Okay, I get that Thomas Kinkade probably had a large ego and liked to see his name on every puzzle, but I seriously doubt that he would have put his name on one puzzle THREE TIMES!

So, I’m not completely finished with the initial sorting of the edge and like colored pieces, but here’s what I do know so far…

1.  There are at least 3 puzzles mixed up in this ziplock bag of mystery.
2.  I think there’s one puzzle that’s some sort of cottage or house scene; another one that might be store / business fronts, and yet another that looks like a lighthouse / water scene possibly.
3.  I did see one piece that had a partial word on it “cisco” so I’m thinking that one of the puzzles might be a San Francisco scene of some sort.
4.  Tom and Mercedes have a wicked sense of humor….thanks A LOT guys!  LOL
5.  There appears to be some strange shaped pieces that have a small straight looking edge, but I don’t believe they are true edge pieces.  I think they’re in there just to trip me up, but I will not let them win…no way!
6.  I will never again send Tom and Mercedes an “easy, breeezy” puzzle…oh no, next time it will be anything but….MMMUUUUWWWWHHAHAAHAHA.

After having only worked with the Life puzzle pieces for the last 3 years, these pieces feel enormous.  And then of course there’s the fact that none of the shapes are of a regular cut like Life.  So this ought to be interesting for sure….sorting pieces into three different puzzles when I have no clue what any of the pictures are supposed to look like.  😮

Here are a couple more pictures of what I’ve sorted so far:

Initial sorting into like colored pieces and edges….big pile on the bottom left is what I still have to sort through.

One of three Thomas Kinkade signatures – hmmm!

Edges, edges, and even more edges!