Fan Flair Review

Puzzle	Fan Flair
Artist	Betsy Brown
Type	Teaser
Catalog Picture

(Note June reviewed this puzzle earlier in 2008.)

This is fiendish puzzle that I was lucky enough to have a chance to work on, but it's also the first Stave (or any to my recollection) jigsaw puzzle that I did not finish. I love Betsy's art and puzzles usually. This one and I really just weren't getting along--recall Puff Enough and I had a bit of a battle....

I got somewhere between 40-60% done after 12+ hours and just did not have it in me to finish. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the beauty of the puzzle but I just felt too exhausted mentally instead of the normal calm I get working a jigsaw.

What's to like: very creative new take on a teaser puzzler. To me it is interesting and reshapes the thinking about them a bit since most teasers have a cavity where lots of pieces go in interesting ways. Instead here, the whole picture and the dropouts together become the challenge. The pictures both in the catalog and that June has here (search this site for fan flair) don't quite capture it but I will try my best...

...I would describe it is someone poured a reddish - magenta-ish - pink-ish color across a canvas and then very artfully dipped the tips of a paint brush into other paints and swirled very carefully like trails to form waves of faint color and patterns.

The shaping and dragon themes in this one were quite nice.

The whole "fan" series (and related ilk) are clearly a challenging new type of Teaser. Maybe I'll give one of the smaller ones in the family a try again one of these days. But for now, this puzzle had to go back in the box.

Pros: New family of challenges from Stave. This is the top of the range within the family and to me personally really nice dragon themes.

Cons: Really, really freakin hard, no really, really, really. Did I mention how hard it was? I puzzled this for well over 6 hours before making any headway to speak of and another 6 before just surrendering. Perhaps knowing what I know now about how some of the symmetry worked as well as the general flow of the design, I might have made more progress sooner.

Anyhow... read June's review linked earlier for a very different perspective and as always YMMV. Happy puzzling. I've got my copy of State of Mind in from Stave today, so hopefully my "What a Gem" isn't too far behind.