My mother-in-law love giraffes. They are so graceful and elegant looking that I can certainly understand why she likes them so much. They really are a beautiful animal. So when I saw this gorgeous puzzle online and that it was “only” 500 pieces I thought let me get it for her and see if she will do the puzzle and I would offer to help her out if needed. She’s not really a puzzler, but she will on occasion help me out with one when she and my father-in-law come up for a visit. I think I bought this when we were still at the end of COVID lockdown so I figured if she was bored one day this might be a good time filler. Well I think she put it away and forgot about it as it was at least another year before she brought it up with her on a visit with the intent to work on it that weekend.

Unfortunately, I vastly underestimated the level of complexity on this puzzle. Even though I thought I was taking it easy on her by giving her a 500 piece puzzle rather than the most common puzzle piece count of all — 1000 pieces, I was wrong. She struggled just to get the border together, so of course, I jumped in to help and while that part wasn’t difficult for me, the rest of the puzzle was an absolute beast! We worked on it together for a while, put it away, and then I pulled it back out later when my brother and his family were visiting, and at one point I think there were 4 or 5 of us working on this thing at the same time.

We FINALLY finished it and our elation was very quickly doused by reality — we had one missing piece! Since this was a puzzle I had given to her as a gift, I had also intended to have it framed when finished so she could hang it on the wall, but with the missing piece I was bummed and didn’t want to frame it until I found it. So I set the puzzle aside at my house for a couple of weeks in hopes of finding the little bastard, but alas I never did. I do truly think it was missing from the manufacturer since we only worked on the puzzle at the dining room table and we searched high and low. I even looked elsewhere in the house thinking it could have “walked off” on our clothes or arms, but no such luck. I also could have written to Anatolian and I’m sure they would have sent me a replacment, but by that time I figured the production run was likely done and a new puzzle might not have the exact same cut and the missing piece would not fit exactly.

I then had the brilliant idea to try my hand at creating a replacement as luckily the missing piece was not an overly complicated looking one. It only had about two colors to deal with so I figured how hard could it be to recreate? Yeah, that wasn’t exactly true either. It was not nearly as easy as I had hoped. I did end up using a piece of cardstock and then taping it in place on the back of the puzzle to show through the hole where the piece should have been. It turned out OK for my first time ever re-creating a piece, but it is glaringly obvious to me whenever I look at the puzzle. My MIL indicates she asks friends when they come over and see the puzzle for the first time if they can find the missing piece and almost none of them can. I personally think it’s more due to their Octogenarian eyes than my ability to create a good replacement piece. 🤣

Nonetheless, she loves it, and it’s hanging proudly in her living room and I have to say from a distance one would probably not be able to see the missing piece. How easily can you find it?