Category Scores
Pieces 10/10
Fit 4/10
Confusion 7/10
Differentiation 9/10
Picture 8/10
The European Birds box
76%
Details
Pieces 1000
Shape Square
Brand Grovely

European Birds

The box of this jigsaw has seen better days - the lid has some tears in it, and the remarkably thin cardboard has bulged and bent, either by the passage of time or buried in the back of a cupboard somewhere with too much weight on it.

Still, it’s another cheery scene perfect for bringing some colour to the cold winter nights.

A proud puzzler with his puzzle!

Pieces - 10/10

The individual pieces are just about perfect; just the right thickness, perfectly stiff and not even a hint of the picture ’layer’ lifting - despite this being an obviously old puzzle that hasn’t had the easiest life (to judge from the tattered remains of the box!)

Fit - 4/10

This is what lets this puzzle down quite significantly; the fit between pieces is very loose. Building the edge, especially, was a constant frustration because every time you brush past a section it would disintegrate.

That said, things get a lot more stable once you have a block of pieces, so as the puzzle progressed the fit became a lot less of an irritation.

Confusion - 7/10

Despite the loose fit, most of the time it was very clear when pieces went together - considerably aided by the level of detail and texture in the image.

That said, there were several occasions I ended up with misplaced pieces. Nearly every time that happened, I realised almost right away because even though the pieces would go together, it didn’t feel quite right.

In one particularly annoying area, I ended up with only one possible piece (a three “knob” and one “hole”) remaining in the box, but that physically didn’t really fit in the space left. The colouring was close enough that it looked almost right, but the fit told me I’d gone wrong.

I only had to scan about a third of the puzzle to find the other offending piece, which fit annoyingly well and colour matched almost perfectly.

Differentiation - 9/10

Lots of birds, lots of textured branches and an impressive colour palette; this puzzle managed to hit the perfect sweet spot of being uniform enough to be a challenge, but varied enough to be able to join things up.

Aside from a very few areas where all the browns started to look the same - possibly influenced by the time of night I was still battling it - the busy nature of the scene made for excellent differentiation.

Picture - 8/10

While I’m not sure the density of birds here is particularly realistic, they are nicely painted, easily recognisable and brightly coloured. The feathered textures are impressive, and it was a lovely scene to slowly appear on the table in front of me.

The completed European Birds puzzle
The completed 'European Birds' puzzle