Review: “Lost in the Woodies” by Charles Wysocki, Buffalo Games – 9/10
Publisher: Buffalo Games (US), published 2016
Title: “Lost in the Woodies” by Charles Wysocki, Buffalo Games, 1000 pieces
Finished size: 19.75″ x 26.75″
OUR RATING: 9/10
BUFFALO GAMES WEEK:
From June 15-June 30, 2016, Puzzle Warehouse is holding a special promotion with Buffalo Games. All Buffalo Games puzzles will be 30% off! That’s a really deep discount, so stock up while you can. Here at Jigsaw Junkies, we’ll be featuring Buffalo Games this week with two reviews and a feature on the weekend. You can see all Buffalo Games puzzles on Puzzle Warehouse here.
Charles Wysock:
Wysocki is one of those artist whose puzzles I instantly like when I see them, but I rarely actually assemble Wysocki puzzles for one reason or another. With the 4th of July coming up, and the Buffalo Games promo, it was well past time to put a Wysocki on the puzzle board!
Box Quality: (8/10)
The Buffalo Games box is a small square shape, which saves room on the shelf. The front is shown above. The back of the box has a generic Buffalo Games back. The Wysocki name/brand is featured heavily on the front and sides of the box.
The back of the box is a generic Buffalo Games back. Since Buffalo has an entire line of Charles Wysocki puzzles, it would be nice to have a “Wysocki” back with a photo and bio of the artist, as Ravensburger puzzles often do.
The sides have a photo of the puzzle, the puzzle name and piece count. The Buffalo logo is on three sides so you can shelve it facing out.
Inside:
Buffalo Games boxes are not shrink-wrapped but are instead sealed with glue on all four sides, meaning that you have to cut the glue with a knife and thus damage the side of the box in order to open it. As I’ve noted in past reviews, I don’t like having to mar the box so I’ve dinged the box score for this. The inside of the box contains the puzzle pieces (NOT in a bag, but completely loose) as well as a full-color poster. It’s nice to have the poster to work with since it’s much larger than the box front as a reference image. Besides the poster and the puzzle pieces, there’s nothing else in the box.
The poster is shown in the photo below. It has the puzzle image to use during assembly and shows a few other Wysocki puzzles. The back of the poster is blank white.
The Image: 10/10
When I decided to review a Wysocki puzzle, I chose “Lost in the Woodies” because I love the earthy colors and the summery, lakeside feel. It has that Adirondacks flavor with the fantastic stone/wood lodge in the background and the wooden cove sign. I love the colors–the blue water against the red-brown of the boats and the green of the trees. It has quite a bit of detail too–lots of individual figures and little signs and birds–which makes it well suited to be a puzzle image. I’ve given the image full marks.
(Click on any of the images in this review for a closer look.)
Puzzle Quality: (8.5/10)
You can see my brand page for Buffalo Games here. This puzzle is at least a few years old, and I found the quality very good. In fact, it felt a little better to me than the “Butterflies” puzzle from the 2016 line up that I just did, but that may be because the image is more muted and thus looks a bit better with the glossy finish on the pieces. When I compare the pieces end to end, the pieces in both puzzles look to be the same thickness.
The Buffalo Games pieces feel hard and sturdy, there was no puzzle dust, and the image reproduction and color were excellent. The pieces are cut in a grid, but there is good variety in the pieces shapes, as you can see in the close-up below. I never had any issue with pieces seeming to fit where they did not. The fit is not annoyingly loose, but you do have to use care when moving assembled pieces because they fall apart fairly easily (unlike Springbok or Sunsout).
Overall, the puzzle quality felt really good as I assembled this one.
Assembly: (9.5/10)
This is an easy puzzle. I found it straight-forward, fun, and relaxing. I did the border first, then the blue sky area since it’s relatively small and very easy to spot on the pieces. Next came the green trees, because they’re also a small part of the image and easy to sort from the pile.
Above: My favorite part of this image is the lodge, which makes me want to go there right now. Note the names of the boats in the three boat bays.
The blue water is also distinctive and easy to fill in. It wraps around a bit, but with the tips of signs and boats and rocks and other objects, it’s pretty easy to tell where the blue sections go.
The wooden dock and the brown path have light tones that break up the image and provide easy sections to do. I loved working all the figures, especially the two girls in the white dresses.
Another thing I particularly liked about this puzzle was that there is a lot of written signs around the scene–from the sign on the dock, to the boat names, to the names on the cart and the little sales hut. These pieces are fun to pick out and assemble.
There are some nice fabric textures in the image too, from the clothing on the figures to the upholstery and pillows and awnings on the boats.
Above: The fine detail is really nice. You can clearly see the couple’s faces even though they are quite small in the image.
Summary:
I thoroughly enjoyed assembling this lovely Charles Wysocki puzzle by Buffalo Games. This grid-cut puzzle has a wide variety of shapes, sturdy pieces, and excellent detail reproduction. It comes with a poster that can be used for reference as you work. It’s a fairly straight-forward and relaxing puzzle to assemble, without any real difficult sections. There are a wide variety of colors and textures in the image, from the sky to the stone lodge to the wooden boats, the dirt path, the blue water, and all the small figures. The large amount of written signs in the image are fun to find and put together. This is a puzzle perfect for the 4th of July or anytime you need a dose of summertime leisure.
Where to find:
Take advantage of the Buffalo Games promotion at Puzzle Warehouse (thru 6/30/2016) to get 30% off this puzzle. Click here for the sale page.
JJ
