Monday Mystery

As I've mentioned before, we have continued with our happy hour puzzles after quarantine. We've had plenty of hard ones and many fun ones. A couple were not so fun. This is one of those. 

This is what happens when you order a puzzle from China. First of all, it comes in a plastic bag---not even a ziplock! Along with that, they send a picture of the puzzle.

1000 pieces. It doesn't look like it should be that hard. There are plenty of textures and colors. 

This is where we are. Since it hasn't been fun, we haven't been that motivated and have skipped several days. Mindy worked from here on Friday. So, when she finished with work, she joined us while we waited for Stephanie and Nicky to get here for happy hour. See those two missing pieces on the lower right? Mindy was determined to find those. They should have been easy. She never could find them. Also, I should note, that we are pretty organized about our puzzles. We lay out ALL the pieces using cookie sheets. That way we can look easily for specific pieces. That lead me to telling Butch that I had two pieces that just had to go in a certain area. I passed them to him.

I just couldn't figure out how to make those two pieces fit---but that building is the only place they could go. That's when he discovered this. Now look closely.

See those two that are sort of purplish? They don't really match the surrounding pieces.

Well, guess what? We had two pieces that were exact duplicates!!! We've never had that happen before! 

So then, I picked up this lone pink piece that I'd tried to find a spot for---many times. There are only two small pink areas on this puzzle. It didn't fit there. We turned it over....

...it doesn't even go with this puzzle!! OMGosh!! What a waste of time! No wonder this puzzle is so hard. There's no telling how many pieces are duplicates. We are going to keep plugging away and see how it comes together. Now it's a challenge AND a mystery!! 1000 pieces. We'll see how many there really are! I'm guessing 1006! 

One thing that is not a mystery: I'll not be buying another puzzle from China!! 

Stay tuned.....