2025-12-08

For the final BYOP of the year, the theme was, of course, “holiday puzzles”. And before this event, I did not own anything that could even remotely be considered holiday themed. Fortunately, I had recently taken advantage of a special offer at my local Indigo to stock up on discounted puzzles, and this one fit perfectly. I’m not a fan of puzzles with Christmas trees or Santas or any of the more classical images you would expect (also, they often have a ton of snow and trying to wrangle a bunch of white pieces doesn’t sound fun to me). As such, I was very happy to find this cozy image that has the word “holiday” in it and must therefore qualify. This was my second time puzzling an image from the IndigoxHobbry collection and I was feeling empowered by the possibility of just maybe being able to finish it in under an hour. Alas, it was not to be, but I am getting mighty close to that first-try sub-60.

I made a point of not overly studying the image in advance as I really wanted this to be a true first attempt. Once I started flipping the pieces, I was a bit disappointed to find that there weren't as many distinct colours as I expected, but there were still some good places to start. The oven and range hood were the first colours to be set aside, followed closely by anything with bright red or orange. I started with the border to structure my work space, and the first part I assembled was the green & white checkerboard, followed closely by the dark grey pieces. I know there are a few places I could have sped up, and my piece sorting could have been more efficient, but I felt really good about my speed throughout and don’t think I made too many mistakes. For the last stretch, I really got to appreciate how each piece is slightly unique and the clarity of the image made it easy to quickly spot where each piece went. As of writing this, there are only two people who have completed this puzzle on MySpeedPuzzling, and both of us were at the BYOP. It makes it a bit difficult to say how my time compares, but I do have the fastest 1st attempt (at least for now).

Puzzle Stats

Brand: Indigo x Hobbry

Name: Homemade Holidays

Artist: Nicolle Lalonde

Time to completion: 66 minutes and 49 seconds