2025-09-21

Third challenge of the weekend! After my struggle through the butterfly yesterday, I was really hoping for something I could positively zip through. My partner actually apologized in advance for this one, sensing it might not be as easy as I hoped. Indeed, he picked a notoriously challenging one, but I was still very pleased to notice that there were considerably more colours in this one than the previous, and that meant I could pivot between sections when one wasn’t working anymore. Excited to beat yesterday’s time, I dove right in.

I believe most of the “Colorful Animals” collection are rather tough puzzles, although now that I’ve seen the rest of the selection, I think I got relatively lucky (the other two animals are a peacock and a chameleon, I’ll let you guess how hard they look). Still, this wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. I put off working on the actual lionfish for as long as I could, focusing instead on the bright yellow corner and pink… rocks? Corals? The pink stuff on the left.

All things considered, the fish itself wasn’t that bad. It’s considerably smaller than the butterfly, and having fewer pieces to choose from makes things a bit quicker. That being said, after a while the stripes start to get blurry and I was going off the shape of the pieces more than anything else. Eventually I’ll have to try these colourful animals again; they seem to come up regularly in various speed puzzling competitions so they’re likely challenges I’ll encounter out in the wild. I'm in no rush though. Two challenging animals in a single weekend will be enough for me this year.

Puzzle Stats

Brand: Ravensburger

Name: Lionfish

Time to completion: 89 minutes