When Nature Calls

Puzzle	When Nature Calls
Artist	Dee Rogers
Type	Teaser
Catalog Picture

This 130 piece puzzle was a treat to get my mitts on thanks to a puzzle buddy. The catalog picture really doesn't do the puzzle justice in an attempt to provide surprise. Also, when this puzzle's total is combined with the other Stave's by Dee I will review over the next few days it brings the total number of Dee Stave's I've puzzled to 12 puzzles and 1160 pieces.

Now, I'm reviewing this puzzle "out of order" from the ones I've recently completed because I thought the design was relatively unique. Specifically, prior to this puzzle I would have broken the Teasers into two main groupings, cavity puzzles and repeating shape puzzles. This one fits neither category particularly well IMHO though it has some elements of each.

Dee's artwork is quite playful and the puzzle's title arguably has a bit of a double meaning given the toilet paper near the bear-occupied tent.

In terms of the artistry, I just finished puzzling "Dreaming of Ewe", "Blast Off", "Bumble Rumble" (I have not yet finished puzzling) and this one. The thing that really struck me as a result was just what a "dynamic range" Dee has an artist and how well she and the Stave folks have worked her art into the puzzles. This one really impressed me for the mix of vibrant colors with sharp transitions (and color line cutting, bastards!) as well as the playful variety of silhouette/teaser pieces and their match into the "Nature" and camping themes of the puzzle.

Coming back to this one being a lot of fun, my usual Teaser strategy (Basic Strategy #1) is to segregate teaser/silhouette pieces from the "regular" pieces. Put together the shell and then put the teaser pieces in. For the repeating puzzles, I go to Basic Strategy #2, brute force, pretty quickly with some shape memory/etc.

As I sorted the pieces it quickly became apparent that neither Basic Strategy would work. This puzzle is a bit like an onion--not in shape/smell--but in having layers. The "shell" is small. There was no big teaser cavity apparent and instead, I developed a new strategy (some details omitted to avoid spoilers, but I'll have a finished image on my Flickr sooner rather than later and will also answer emails).

That made this a lot of fun.

So I think I said when I reviewed "Tough Act to Follow" I said it made my top 3 Teaser list, now, I'm torn. This one just was so pleasant and different I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit outside the "ordinary" (is there such a thing with Stave?) Teaser puzzle. As for my top 3 teasers, the list is in disarray.

Total puzzling time with TV watching was around 2.5 hours and I was watching a fair bit of TV.

Special award for most unique use of the signature piece that I've seen recently. Not in terms of colors (June's remark on Riding High), but in terms of how they worked it into the puzzle.