Winter Puzzling 2026

Usually, during the month of April, once spring has arrived and the dismal cold weather is behind us, I like to bring you a post about the puzzles I did over the winter.  In case you are fairly new to my website, you would not know that I have a great love for working puzzles and I typically assemble several during January, the National Puzzle Month, always ones with 1,000 pieces.  Hearing and feeling the satisfying snap when the correct pieces come together is for me, akin to the “runner’s high” one gets, previously thought to be due to the body’s release of endorphins, but more recently attributed to endocannabinoids (sounds addictive doesn’t it—just like puzzling for me).

This is actually the tenth year in a row I have published a post about puzzles.  But thinking that you my readers of these annual posts may have grown tired of the piece-by-piece discourse I usually expound upon, delving into both the challenges and the successes, I decided to take a different approach this year.  So, rather than starting with a photo of the box, a photo of the puzzle frame (assembled edge pieces), and then including several photos as I made progress, I will give a bit of background about the puzzle and then skip to the finished puzzle, sparing you all the gory details.

Those who know me well often for either my birthday or Christmas give me a puzzle, a gift I always appreciate and one of which, I never tire and this year was no exception as I received two puzzles for Christmas, one from my wife and one from my daughter and son-in-law.

My daughter and her family live in Seattle, WA and our favorite museum to go to when we visit is what we affectionally call the “airplane museum”, but more correctly, the Museum of Flight.  Whenever we go, we always make a stop in the gift shop before leaving, and I have often found myself looking at their selection of puzzles.  But never in all my years of going have I seen this puzzle, so it was a real thrill when I unwrapped it.

Rather than picturing an actual photo of the exterior of the museum, this puzzle is a montage image of several easily recognizable features of the museum from the iconic “Red Barn”, the building in which William Boeing built his first airplanes in the early 1900s to the sleek Blue Angel jet that now adorns the entry drive to the museum (on one visit, we actually drove through as they were hoisting it into place).

It was a blast to put together!

No one knows me and my love for puzzles better than my wife of 46 years, so she has also given me puzzles multiple times in the past.  This year she branched out from the ones that she has given me before by selecting one that depicts a calming Japanese scene.  Since neither of us have been there, I can only guess that knowing our son and daughter-in-law are traveling to Japan this year to celebrate their 15^th wedding anniversary, somehow inspired my wife to pick an oriental theme.

This was a challenging puzzle!  While the left side of the image had enough unique features that made the pieces easy to recognize and place, the right side was a mishmash of colors and textures.  To say that for this side, there was a lot of trial-and-error is an understatement.

But when I viewed the completed puzzle, I thought it was beautiful and well worth the effort as it graced our coffee table until spring.

Almost every year I usually assemble a car-themed puzzle, and a quick inventory of my puzzle closet revealed a total of six boxes so far.  Not always, but often these I purchase myself as I run across them during the year.  But whenever I find one, I always save it for January.

Having been born in the 1950s and a life-long car lover, I am very familiar with the cars of the 1960s and I can recall seeing every one of these when they were sold new in that period, not as the vintage cars they are today sixty years later.

A nice aspect of this puzzle is that these are actual photos of cars in interesting settings, not a painting of cars which sometimes make their assembly more difficult.  In addition to loving to drive, I love to look at and admire cars.  And with 18 nice ones on this puzzle, I had a lot to look over the near week it took me to assemble this one having a lot of fun in the process.

The last puzzle I did during January was one I did not even know I had until I was pulling out my car puzzle from the closet.  I do not know where it came from or who gave it to me.  But I suspect it might have been my wife who is an avid book lover.

Organized in a colorful rainbow display of book covers and spines, it made for pulling out pieces of one common color at a time easy while ignoring all of the other pieces.  Starting with the purple books, I worked my way from the bottom right to the top left of the puzzle.  The only slight confusion was there were a couple of book spines that were repeated.

But finished, it would be appreciated by any bibliophile.

To my fellow puzzlers out there, I hope you also had a nice season of puzzling as much as I did.  In addition, I hope you have enjoyed this different approach to my winter puzzling post.  Feel free to leave comments or suggestions if you are so inclined as I appreciate all of your very kind and thoughtful feedback.

Until puzzling next year…