2025-11-15

Two weeks after my grumpy experience trying to wrangle a couple of manatees (you read about that puzzle here), I was rested and ready to try a new puzzle. In my pile of new images I had yet to try were two landscapes that, at first glance, looked like they would be equally difficult, but in the end were very different experiences. I chose to start with Joffre Lakes Park, which was featured in the Canadian National Jigsaw Puzzle Competition 2025 qualifying round. Although it’s not a perfectly fair comparison, I was excited to try this one out and compare with the results from the event to see if I might have qualified for the finals. Either way it would be a great piece of data, but of course I was very much hoping to be in the top half of results.

Although Ravensburger in particular is quite well known for their landscape puzzles, it’t not something I’ve done very often. In fact, I believe this is my first ever landscape speed puzzling attempt. I expected this one to be hard. First, there aren’t a ton of colours, and there’s a lot of greenery, which I often find challenging. I was also worried about the reflection and whether I’d be able to easily separate the pieces from the top or bottom of the image. Despite my impression that this would be a very difficult puzzle, I approached it with a positive mindset and was ready to spend as long as I needed to finish it.

In the end, as long as I needed turned out not to be very long at all. And in fact, there are way more colours than I thought. First, the colour of the sky is quite different between the top and bottom of the image, and the teal in the middle is very easy to distinguish. There was also quite a bit of texture in the mountains, something I’m slowly getting better at paying attention to. The trees at the bottom of the mountain don’t quite look the same as those near the top, and so I was able to move efficiently between sections of the puzzle, focusing first on the clear separation between the lake and the mountain, then going through one colour at a time.

And now the real question is whether my time would have been good enough to qualify for the finals at the Canadian Nationals. The CJPA keeps a record of everyone’s results for past competitions, and I was able to compare my time with the event participants. Obviously I have to take into account that this puzzle was completed in the comfort of my own home, with perfect lighting and without the stress of being in a competition, but my completion time would have placed me 26th out of the 110 participants, and the top 40 moved on the finals. I still have a long way to go, but this certainly makes me feel a lot better about my chances of competing at the national event in 2026.

Puzzle Stats

Brand: Ravensburger

Name: Joffre Lakes Park

Time to completion: 63 minutes