2025-10-05

My second full month of speed challenges begins with a new shape! Circular puzzles were not something I had on my radar, but they featured quite heavily in the qualifying rounds of the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship so I quickly set about obtaining one. You can read more about my thoughts on the world championship and how it’s impacting my training here. There are several interesting designs in the Ravensburger “Circle of Colors” collection, but not that many can be found at my local stores. I was lucky however to find this “Flowers” model and was very excited to try it out. I avoided looking too closely at the image before doing the challenge so it would be a true “first look” attempt. Unlike the regular 500-piece puzzles, the image on the box shows the exact layout of the pieces, which would make studying the puzzle much easier. I might do a bit of studying for next time, but for today I went in as unprepared as I could.

The great thing about many (but not all) circular puzzles is that the image is arranged in a gradient. I do love picking out pieces of a specific colour to build one section at a time, so this puzzle was a ton of fun for me. I started with the purple, which seemed the easiest to pull out from the pack, and then worked counter-clockwise around the circle. That is, until I ran into the yellow which, for some reason, gave me a really hard time. Instead of pushing through I switched to the blue, then filled out all the little in-between spaces, then finished the yellow and finally the green. I thought my time would be a bit better, but I’m still happy with the outcome. I didn’t realize how different the cut of the pieces would be on a circular puzzle, but it is indeed completely different from a classic grid or ribbon cut. There were some very bizarre shapes that really threw me off, but the border was very easy to put together. Circular puzzles take up a lot more space than a rectangular puzzle, but the shape makes it really easy to spin around to work on a different section, something I enjoyed very much and took full advantage of.

Puzzle Stats

Brand: Ravensburger

Name: Flowers (Circle of Colors collection)

Artist: Sherry Lee

Time to completion: 88 minutes