2025-08-31

My third and final speed challenge of what I’m calling my initiation period confirmed for me that this was something I wanted to pursue. As with the second challenge, I was determined to finish the puzzled before the 90 minutes were up and I had already started looking up different competitions and how fast I would need to be to become a contender.

As soon as I saw the puzzle image I knew this was going to be a tough one. I tried to do many things at once and was sorting pieces while I was flipping them, and changing my mind frequently about how to do the sorting. Would a border piece with pink on it go in the border pile or the pink pile? In the end, I probably spent more time than I should have looking for pieces after I had sorted them, mainly because I did a poor job of separating the piles.

Despite the rough start, I think I did pretty okay. Having the colours interrupted up by the doors and windows (and don’t get me started on the railing) made it quite challenging, but I still managed to finish on time. If I had to do this one again I would probably complete the border sooner as it really helped keep everything a bit tighter and made the puzzle seem much less overwhelming when I could see exactly how much space it occupied. In my excitement I forgot to take a picture of the finished puzzle, but hopefully the box will do until I decide to try it again.

Puzzle Stats

Brand: Ravensburger

Name: Colourful Town Houses in London

Time to completion: 85 minutes