Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 9

I went on a binge today and finished the puzzle. The last hundred pieces are usually quite easy to finish up. You just pick a piece and look around the board until you find its spot. So once I got to around a hundred pieces, it went together in about a half hour to an hour.

I'll leave this one together for a few days and then start on the next one, shown below. It is only a 300 piece puzzle so it should go together quite quickly. I have two more 1000 piece puzzles ordered from Amazon but they won't get here until mid-May. 

My next puzzle - The Tropics

My niece posted something on Facebook for me today which just blew me away. The world's largest jigsaw puzzle. You'll find information on it in an article at Scary Mommy.  The puzzle is actually 27 puzzles that interconnect. Each of the 27 sections comes in its own bag and can be done individually. They show 27 wonders of the world. And it has 51,300 pieces and a whopping US$409.99 price tag! Yikes! 

The finished puzzle, if connected together as one large puzzle, measures 28 feet wide by 6 and a quarter feet high. You'll need to put it together in the garage! 

I couldn't find it on Amazon Canada but did find an interesting and also very large puzzle that is one solid picture rather than 27 pictures joined together.

This puzzle shows famous landmarks from around the world in one giant montage. It measures 749 X 157 cm. or 24.57 feet across by 5.15 feet high. Not quite as large as the other one, but it is all one picture. Price tag? CDN $1810.14  Say what? Yep, that's a little too much for my blood.

Yesterday's Riddle:

On a certain islands, the esidents are all either scalliwags or saints. The scalliwags always lie and the saints always tell the truth. A stranger to the island passes three of the inhabitants standing around together. Let's call them A, B and C. He asks A, "Are you a saint or a scalliwag? A is a mumbler and the stranger does not hear his answer so he turns to B. "What did A just say?" he asks. B replies "A said he is a scalliwag." At this point C jumps in and exclaims, "Don't believe B. He is lying." 

So what are B and C? And what about A?

Answer: First let's consider something about A. The stranger did not hear his response, but we know do know what it was. Consider that a scalliwag, as a liar, has to answer the question with "I am a saint." The saint, as a truth teller, also must answer with "I am a saint." We do not actually know which he is from the answer.

However, because B says A was a scalliwag, obviously B is lying, hence B is a scalliwag. And since C jumps in to assert that B is lying, which is, in fact, true, then C must be a saint.

New Riddle: I'm copying this exactly as a friend of mine posted on Facebook. 

You're playing Let's Make a Deal and you are in the final round. Monty Hall shows you three doors and tells you that a NEWWWW CAARRRR is behind one of them. He asks you to pick a door. You pick. Now he says he has a special option for you. He says he is taking one choice away and there are only two left. One will be a winner. You are given the option to keep your pick or switch. What do you do? Does it make a difference?

My next post will be when I start the new puzzle, which may be a few days from now. 

• Day by Day Winter Wonderland Puzzle Photo Gallery

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 8

I got quite a bit done on the lighter colored trees today.

Yesterday's Riddle:

Which is correct - the yolk is white or the yolk are white? 

Answer: Neither. A yolk is yellow.

Today's Riddle: This one is more of something to think about. On a certain islands, the esidents are all either scalliwags or saints. The scalliwags always lie and the saints always tell the truth. A stranger to the island passes three of the inhabitants standing around together. Let's call them A, B and C. He asks A, "Are you a saint or a scalliwag? A is a mumbler and the stranger does not hear his answer so he turns to B. "What did A just say?" he asks. B replies "A said he is a scalliwag." At this point C jumps in and exclaims, "Don't believe B. He is lying." 

So what are B and C? And what about A?

• Day by Day Winter Wonderland Puzzle Photo Gallery

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 7

Didn't get a whole lot done on the puzzle today but did add more to the trees and started filling in the big hole between the house and the border. I'm already at a point where a lot of the pieces look like each other and it is harder to find where they go. The ones that are all a solid colour are always the hardest and usually I do those last.

Yesterday's Riddle:

There are more inhabitants of New York City than there are hairs on the head of any one resident. Given that no one is totally bald, are there at least two residents with the exact same number of hairs on their head? 

Answer: Yes. And that's a definite yes which can be proven. Let's simplify it to show this is so. Suppose New York City has only ten residents. Now since there are more residents than hairs on the head of any one resident, each resident can only have nine hairs on their head at most. Since none of the residents is bald, each must have at least one hair on their head. So of the ten residents, nine of them can have different numbers of hairs ranging from one to nine. But the tenth resident must have at least one hair but no more than nine, so he will have the same number of hairs as one of the other residents. It makes no difference how many residents there are. As long as the conditions hold, the answer must be yes.

Today's Riddle: 

Which is correct - the yolk is white or the yolk are white? 

Answer tomorrow.

• Day by Day Winter Wonderland Photo Gallery

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 6

Didn't get a great deal done but I did connect the feces from end to end and did add to the trees. And most of the dog is now in the picture. I have pulled out most of the sky, snow and deciduous tree pieces out though there are still a fair number in the box.

Yesterday I posed a riddle. Here it is again with the answer, followed by a  new riddle.

A man is looking at a portrait. Someone asks, "Whose picture are you looking at?" Rather cryptically, the man replies:

"Brothers and sisters have I none,"

and points to the picture, 

"but this man's father is my father's son."

So whose picture is he looking at? 

Answer: The picture is of his son. Apparently about half of the people posed this riddle think it is a picture of himself. If the second part of the riddle had read "This man is my father's son," then it would have been a picture of himself. 

Today's Riddle: There are more inhabitants of New York City than there are hairs on the head of any one resident. Given that no one is totally bald, are there at least two residents with the exact same number of hairs on their head? 

Answer tomorrow.

• Day by Day Winter Wonderland Puzzle Photo Gallery

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 5

Managed to add to the house, the sled and the trees but not as much as I would have liked.  After the picture of the puzzle is a riddle, a puzzle of a different sort.

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 5 - April 13. 2020

A friend on Facebook posted a logic puzzle on his timeline the other day and I got it wrong. Seems 87% of people get it wrong, including Ph.D.'s. I might post that puzzle in the future, but today I have a classic for you. 

A man is looking at a portrait. Someone asks, "Whose picture are you looking at?" Rather cryptically, the man replies:

"Brothers and sisters have I none,"

and points to the picture, 

"but this man's father is my father's son."

So whose picture is he looking at? 

The answer tomorrow!

• Day by Day Winter Wonderland Jigsaw Puzzle Photo Gallery

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 4

Had a busy day today so I didn't do as much on the puzzle as I would have liked, but still made good progress.

• Day by Day Winter Wonderland Puzzle Photo Gallery

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 3

I didn't work on the puzzle as much as I would have liked today, but did get more of the house and sleigh done and got a good start on the fence. When I finish the puzzle I may try and put all the day by day pictures together into an animation.

• Day by Day Winter Wonderland Photo Gallery

Winter Wonderland Puzzle Day 2

Today I worked on the house and the sleigh and got a little bit done on the trees. I pulled a lot of fence pieces out of the box and will likely work on the fence tomorrow, as well as trying to fill in the gaps in the house.

You can see all the photos in sequence at my Day by Day Winter Wonderland Photo Gallery.

Marco's Pandemic Puzzles Day 1

Last November my wife and I took our seventh cruise together, a two week cruise that started at Fort Lauderdale, Florida and took us through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles. There were a number of ports of call along the way, of course.

Now cruise ships always have a wide variety of entertainment aboard and in a corner in one of the lounges was a table set up with a partially completed jigsaw puzzle on it. Passengers could stop by, pop in a piece or two, and continue on their way. I have always like jigsaw puzzles though I hadn't done one in quite a while. So I added a piece, and then another, and I was hooked. Jigsaw puzzles are fun!

Since returning home on December 1st, I've finished seven jigsaw puzzles. I just finished one a couple of weeks ago of a moose in the wild.

Below is a picture of three puzzle boxes. The one on the left, of the tropical cabin, was the one I finished before the moose. The middle one, of course, is the moose. And the last is a winter scene showing a family taking home the Christmas tree on their sleigh. That is the one I started today. 

I thought that since we are in a pandemic and likely to be spending most of our time at home, I'd chronicle the progress on this puzzle day by day as I work towards completing it. Below is the puzzle in its raw state, unwrapped and ready to begin.

As with most puzzles, I start by searching out the flat edges and completing the perimeter. Then I isolate pieces of a certain section of the puzzle. You'll see that after my first day I've completed the perimeter and isolated most of the pieces that will make up the house. Some of those pieces may be part of the sleigh. I have also isolated a few of the tree pieces and of the fence pieces as well. 

In future posts I will likely just post the picture without much commentary. I only work on the puzzle an hour or two each day so it will take a week or two, maybe longer, to complete. In any event, you're invited to follow my day by day updates to see how the puzzle is coming along. 

Meanwhile, I'll order another puzzle or two from Amazon as I expect we may be isolated for a while.

Other Links of Interest

• Our Panama Canal Cruise (on one of my other blogs)