4,000 Piece Puzzle - The World Map

6 weeks lot of fun!Good quality,I love it!

As with all puzzles, especially big ones, you need to be patient and persistent. This puzzle was received well packaged and within the delivery time frame. I was able to complete it within 18 days, in a total of 60 hours or so. For this puzzle, you will need a magnifying glass and it would be helpful if you use the web maps. I usually start assembling a puzzle by joining the outer pieces (the frame), but with this one, the outer pieces were more challenging as they had the same color. So I started with the flags as they seemed to be the easiest part. While doing that, I also assembled parts of the two small round maps of the poles, the small ship and the compass. After that I joined the lines of the inner frame. This puzzle has a lined inner frame, which is helpful when connecting the outer frame. You have to be careful when connecting the outer frame, some pieces has exactly the same shape and almost the same color. After assembling the outer frame, I noticed a difference in the color shades in some areas, even though the pieces fits perfectly from all three sides (the fourth side is the outer straight line). I had to relocate about fifteen pieces or so. You can tell the difference by the shade of the color. After that I connected the Equator and the Meridian lines, then the lines of the tropics as well as the Arctic line. The next step, I sorted out the pieces that had no words or numbers (had only color) and kept them in the box till the end. I should have done that in the beginning, learn from my mistake. These were mostly parts of the oceans, Russia, and China. This step reduced the number of unfinished pieces and made it easier for me to search for the other pieces. Then I connected the big words such as North America, Australia, North Atlantic Ocean and so on. The final step was to connect the pieces which had only color (no letters or numbers), so I sorted them out into groups by the shape of the piece. It was challenging to complete, but once you see it in a frame on your wall you feel that all the hard work was worth it. One note to the manufacturer, to make it easier for us, it would be helpful if you include a poster of the picture (high resolution picture) with the puzzle. Especially because the large letters on the box covers one fourth of the picture. Moreover, the low resolution of the picture on the box makes it difficult for us to read the names of the cities and other places.

I got this puzzle mid March 2023, and just finished it in mid June 2023. I would have finished it sooner but there were several incidents that involved taking apart areas I had done and re-doing them, and an incident with a puppy on the table eating some of the pieces. I HIGHLY recommend putting a length of felt underneath the puzzle, to stop the pieces from moving around. These pieces fit together loosely, so it might be a perfect fit, but since it fits loosely, it is hard to be sure that it is the correct fit. And, there are MANY false fits within the puzzle. What that means is there is a puzzle piece shape that fits exactly into a spot, but it is the wrong piece, there is another piece out there that is identical in shape but maybe has slightly different shading on it, that is supposed to go there. Watch out for the border, there are false fits on there but keep a keen eye on the swirl pattern, and the pieces will match up. Follow all dotted lines on their path to make sure the correct pieces are in the correct places. Make sure each piece is in the correct direction. All the little islands are tricky, because some are so small they take up less than one puzzle piece, so keep an eye on the overall shape of the section. I would recommend doing the flags first, then the border, then the cross section north south and east west lines, dividing the puzzle into quarters. I did the land pieces first and then the oceans, but even though it seems like the land pieces will be easy, there are still many difficulties. Overall you will have a lot of fun completing this, and it's cool to learn the geography as well!

This is a great puzzle overall. It’s a beautiful map that is very detailed. It’s a hard puzzle which is why I bought it. It required hours and hours of sorting, but’s that’s how I do my puzzles. One suggestion is to go to the dollar store and buy 4 sturdy project boards (not poster board, I mean foam core boards) and do the puzzle in quadrants. If you buy the right kind of board then the puzzle pieces won’t slide at all. Then you can stack the boards up and store them somewhere rather than dedicate a huge table to the puzzle for months (you’re going to need a really big table, the puzzle is bigger than two standard white folding buffet tables or whatever you call them. So a few criticisms that may be important to avid puzzle doers: 1) the puzzle is obviously huge, which is great but the company that made it uses a repeating pattern of cuts. I imagine they sort of had to because it’s so big, but I wish the pattern was more “randomized”. I’ll explain why this is a problem in the next point. So 2) the edge is a nightmare. The fact that literally 90% of the pieces have almost an identical picture isn’t the problem. That is hard but fun in a way. The problem is that if you have identical pictures, plus a repeating pattern of piece cuts, then you can have an entire strip of edge fit perfectly somewhere but actually be in the entirely wrong area of the puzzle, and not even know it. Anyways it’s not enough to ruin the whole puzzle but it’s definitely an oversight by the manufacturer. 3) the completed puzzle isn’t very tight. What I mean is most high quality puzzles, once they are done, are locked together and become one huge piece of cardboard. Another way to explain what I’m saying is with this puzzle you can use your forefinger and thumb and separate the pieces slightly, creating an ever so slight gap in the rows. Not only does this make it not feel as solid, but it makes it extremely delicate. If you plan on making portions of the puzzle on a separate surface or table, you’re going to have a really hard time moving and implementing that section into the main puzzle. And if you plan on framing this puzzle it will be a nightmare. 4) The cover picture has the company name and logo plastered all over the side, covering the exact picture that you might want to use as you’re making the puzzle, so you’re left guessing what’s under that section of the cover. There is no full picture of any reasonable size anywhere else on the box, and I couldn’t find a digital picture on their site which would have been a great compromise. Anyways I hate to sound like I’m bashing the puzzle. It’s nice, a lot of fun, and again the picture is beautiful. It’s very challenging which is why I bought it. But for $50 I wish that it didn’t have a repeating cut pattern especially on the edge, that there was a full picture available somewhere, and that all the pieces locked tight when it’s done.