Ravensburger Puzzles on Puzzles 3000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle for Adults - 17471 | Artwork by Karen Puzzles | Premium Interlocking Fit | Vibrant, Glare-Free Design | Durable Blueboard ConstructionThe Forest Stewardship Council

I really enjoy this puzzle of puzzle pieces, nice pastels, a real change from scenic puzzles. I have over twenty-five Ravensburger puzzles as you can see I got hooked on them. Most of them are the 3000 because the 5000 require too much surface and the 2000 are too fast. I see people complain about terrible pieces or lost ones. Well I can honestly tell you I only had one missing piece in all the puzzles from this company and I probably lost it myself. I found three pieces in the wrapper after I had thrown it away once. Yes once in a great while a piece or two will be misshaped but I just go with the flow, "don't get my undies in a bundle" as they say life is too short! They are priced higher then most puzzles but they are quality and last.

I've owned so many Ravensburger puzzles over the years and the quality of their prints and individual pieces are as excellent as ever. I was a bit dubious about how it will look and feel building a puzzle of an image made up of puzzles, but am very pleased at how well it is turning out. I've finished about a quarter of it as I'm writing this review, but have to admit that I'm deliberately taking it slow: this is a very enjoyable image to assemble and I want it to last as long as possible. I watch Karen Puzzles on YouTube, and after seeing it on the shelves in some of her videos fell in love with the colours and composition. It is a bonus, of course, that it is a 3,000 piece puzzle — the bigger the better!

The largest puzzle Id done before this was 1000. This puzzle is BIG. I used two 24”x36” white fiberboards which were just big enough to put the puzzle on, but not for the pieces that I had left to put in. Make sure you have lots of space. Wrapping my brain around the scale of it in the early part of the solve was a kick.I left the pieces in the box and stirred to find ones to place. Don’t do that. It made puzzling super slow and led to a bunch of pieces getting bends and non-fitting pieces to get jammed together. There are 1 or 2 with a skinny cut that are prone to bending. My stirring takes the blame for the rest. Careful separating of locked pieces prevents damage, pivoting one in the right way.Strategy: sort them by their background color in a rainbow. Pick the most unique background color and work on the pieces that are scattered around on top of That background. That makes filling in the rest of the area much easier, removing a lot of the difficulty. Pick another area and repeat. I was glad that I saved orange for last. Work on it under sunlight or white lightbulbs. Bulbs with a yellowish tint make it harder to see the all-important subtle differences in color.I didn’t much miss having a poster. Edge pieces comprise a lot of the little strips not pictured on the box which were easy to do blind. Once you get the rest of an area done, the non-pictured strip doesn’t take that long to do.False fits were super rare. It was mostly obvious when 2 pieces that seem to fit don’t really go together. I think I had 1, maybe 2 that slipped through. I had a piece that I was sure went in the spot I had it, but it wouldn’t go in and the shape looked wrong. I left it half in. I looked a few days later and it somehow had gotten fully placed all by itself, no gaps or anything.One thing that I didn’t expect to happen during the solve was appreciating the areas where Karen gave us puzzlers a little help from how she placed the objects or seeing where she left little areas of challenge.I call it medium difficulty, very doable with perseverance. 500-piece puzzles that are half sky are much harder than this gorgeous image is. If the going gets slow, it’ll speed up in the 2nd half of the solve. The last third of it went relatively quickly. Keep plugging away and you’ll get there. (Color-blind mileage may vary.)

Very difficult 3000 piece puzzle, but so much fun to challenge myself. It's actually so big that I have to build it on 2 separate tables. Quality puzzle. Beautiful color variations. Sturdy pieces fit together snuggly. No letters on the back, thank goodness! About 1/3 of the way done.... wish me luck!

Ravensburger, please note that I am rating 5 stars: A) because I could never rate Karen Puzzles less than 5 stars and B) because I have done enough Ravensburger puzzles to know the quality is usually amazing.This is an irresistibly colorful puzzle and I will automatically buy anything designed by Karen. I hadn't ever done a 3000 piece before but I just took my time and worked on it as the mood struck. If you feel overwhelmed, it is important to remember that it gets easier as you get more pieces put into place. I also re-watched Karen's videos about this puzzle and puzzle tips and tricks while working on this puzzle. I found it helpful when I felt like I wasn't making progress. I wasn't sure I would like such a big puzzle, but I do feel like it made the experience feel more special and like an investment.As mentioned by other reviewers, my puzzle had the issue where pieces would stick inside other pieces and become a little damaged when separating. I have never run into this issue with any other puzzle before. And usually Ravensburger puzzles are great quality. I don't know what happened here, but I trust Ravensburger will look into it and correct this problem.I also struggled with the fact that the box lid was cropped slightly smaller than the image used for the puzzle. At times it threw me off, especially since there was already such a difference in the scale of the items.Overall, I would recommend this puzzle and look forward to seeing more offerings from this collaboration.