Solve an Impossible Puzzle

National jigsaw puzzle day is January 29th. it’s kind of a big deal in the puzzle world, so I actually had a different kind of research, a heavy video planned for today, but I’m still finishing up some of the research. So instead I’m going to be taking on the Impossibles puzzles. The thing about these is that there’s no straight edge and each puzzle has five extra pieces, sound impossible?

Well we’re about to find out, keep watching, but before I get to that, I have a big announcement to share as of this year. I am doing Karen puzzles time and because of that, I have decided to launch a patreon which will be a way for all of you to help support me, and this channel and it’ll also give me a place to share all kinds of bonus content with you.

If you don’t know, patreon is a site where viewers can pay a small monthly amount to support the creators that they like watching and i’ve never had one before now, because in the past i’ve always had one or multiple other jobs, and so I would keep having To take weeks off from the puzzle channel to work on those – and I didn’t want all of you guys paying me when I wasn’t consistently providing content for you, you know, if you guys are paying me your hard-earned money. 

I take that very seriously so now that I’m doing Karen puzzles full time I’ll be able to post more consistently and I’ll have the time to create and share all kinds of bonus content so there will be at least one exclusive video every month. I’ll also share extra clips from the videos, because I always film way more than ends up in the final videos and so I’ll finally have a place to share all of that extra content and then, of course, I’ll be sharing sneak peeks like even before.

It goes up on instagram, you can find out exactly what videos and what puzzles I’m working on and then also i’ve had people ask if I would post long like puzzle with me type of videos that they can just have on. In the background.  That’s what it feels like we’re puzzling together, and I actually used to make videos like that. I actually have a ton of them and I decided to delete them from my channel for reasons that I will explain over on patreon. it’s like too much to get into right now, but finally, with this patreon, I think I’ll finally have a place where I can share them again.

So I know that times are tough for everybody these days, so the way that i’ve set it up is that everybody at three dollars or above everybody gets all the same content. I really don’t want this to be a financial hardship on anyone, so if you can afford more than that – and you want to support me with more than that great – if not also totally fine – I just hope i’ve said it at a good point where I can Support myself, and also we can build a really fun community of puzzlers over there. Of course, all of this is optional. I will still be making these free videos here on youtube, but if you want more puzzle content, if you just can’t get enough of this face, [ Laughter ], the link will be right down below anyway.  That’s all I have to say on that.

Let’s get back to you on these puzzles, so these are the impossibles puzzles from the brand be puzzled. They released a bunch of puzzles under that brand. I only have two of them here. This one is called tick tock and it was released in 2001. I got this when I bought a whole bunch of vintage puzzles from a viewer named brian, and then this one is from their current line.

So it’s super easy to get. I just ordered this online and had it like two days later. I have never done a puzzle from this series before, although I’ve seen them around for a while. So I’m really curious how impossible they truly are and also how the new one holds up to the old one. So, let’s start with this one, let’s take a look. I love this box design.

It is so early 2000s with all of the bevel and embossing. You can see that this was released in 2001 and I feel like the box design. Definitely um shows that this is a little wacky also. I guess the cell phone designs also show that, like who thought to just make a puzzle of nokia, brick phones. I love this. I’m obsessed.

Apparently, it also has hidden images like we’re. gonna have a picture of big ben somewhere in there, and they give you a little note that the cover is only a small portion of the puzzle, not the entire image. So we know that we’re making some kind of design like this, but there’s no full image to work off of [ Music ] looking at the pieces uh. What I first noticed is that they are very glossy. The cardboard is pretty thin, you know not great, but it should be doable and I’m also noticing that we only have peace shapes with the two outs and the two ends.

This kind of standard shape, there’s no variety in the piece shape at all. So I definitely think  That’s going to make this extra difficult. You know beyond all the other handicaps of no edge and extra pieces and no picture to look at, but we do have a lot of different colors going on and very distinct edges around. All of the phones, so it’s not the most difficult image I could think of to do as a puzzle. So I think all that there is to do is to just get started.

I really don’t think it’s gonna be that bad, but you know I say that every time and then four hours later, I’m like crying over my puzzle pieces so we’ll just see [, Music ] all right. So, even though there’s no edge, the sorting was not difficult for this. It only took me about 20 minutes. You can see that I pretty much just sorted by color, so here we have all the green phones and then all the pieces that are just the background, and each of these piles is small enough that I’m really not worried about this puzzle. I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult, but one thing I was thinking is that, since this yellow background is so light, I might put down the black tablecloth just to give it a little more contrast.

While I’m working on it, it’s been an hour and 20 minutes, and I think this is looking great. I’ve put together all of the colorful phones. The next thing that I’m going to do is to try to piece some more of them together to get big sections like this, because I think I have done enough. I can get most of the structure of the puzzle figured out, but I’m kind of like “where are my missing pieces”? Because every single piece that has a lot of color on it connects to another piece and I don’t think the extra pieces all connect together. So everything that connects to at least one piece, I think it’s definitely in the puzzle, but I’m having a great time so far, I’m loving this puzzle.

I think it’s really really fun and this next part where I get to figure out how all of these little sections all fit together. Ooh,  That’s like the best part of the puzzle. This is gonna be so fun. all right, so it’s been a little over two hours and I know that you’re probably all expecting me to come on here and be like. Oh, my god.

This is taking so much longer than I thought. What have I gotten myself into? What am I doing, but I’m actually loving this puzzle? Yes, it’s challenging, especially for a 750 piece puzzle, but I think they struck a really good balance between it being challenging, but also where you feel like you’re, always moving forward. As you can see, I have quite a lot of it together and I’m pretty sure this is the top edge, and this is the bottom edge.

So I definitely think I can finish it this afternoon and yeah. This is great. I’m loving this puzzle, I’m having a great time: all right. Well, I finished it. Look how good that looks and sure enough.

I have five extra pieces. I had been wondering about these five pieces, like if they’re the same extra pieces for every single one that they print you know like. Do they just print an extra and then grab five pieces and randomly put them in all the others, or do they specifically print these five extra pieces, and I don’t know um if anyone else out there has this puzzle? Maybe you can look at your five pieces. See if they match my five pieces, but one thing that is a little weird is that this one piece looks like it’s misprinted because look it’s half white.

So it was pretty obvious that that one was not going to fit anywhere in the puzzle, but it is so nice to do a puzzle on this channel that I can finish in one day without tearing my hair out. I love how the puzzle with like all these little things that they try to add to it to make it impossible, and now, I’m just being here like yeah,  That’s the easiest one I’ve done in a while. So my final time on this puzzle was four hours and 48 minutes. Also one thing I kind of forgot about, while I was working on it, is that there’s also a hidden image you’re supposed to find of Big Ben somewhere on this puzzle. So I was looking at it right before I started filming and I found it right here on the side of this tiger print phone to me.

That seems like a bit of an afterthought.  That’s not really the most exciting part of this puzzle. I don’t know if we really needed to dedicate the entire back of the box to that aspect, but anyway I loved doing this puzzle. I think it was so much fun all right so now it’s time to take a look at the more modern version of the impossibles puzzle series. As you can see, they definitely uh simplified the box design like if we look at them next to each other.

You can just see how much more modern this one looks. Uh this one is definitely a little dated, especially on the back um. You know, it’s much more simple, but still we’re not getting the full picture of what we’re putting together, we’re only getting a little segment of it. They haven’t really changed the formula. It still has no edge five extra pieces, they call it the world’s most difficult puzzle.

it’s still 750 pieces, [ Music ], so the pieces are a lot different from the old version. You can see that all of the ins and outs are a lot smaller like it’s just a different piece shape. Also the cardboard on the back is a different color. We’Ve moved on to blue cardboard now the piece thickness is actually exactly the same, but a big difference is that we have every type of piece shape represented here, so that’ll definitely make it easier than the last one where all we had was the standard piece shape. I do think this new one might be a little more difficult just because of the design.

 That’s on the picture, because, instead of having these fairly big floating objects, instead, we have fairly small ones, so we won’t end up with sections that are quite as large. So it’s only 9am now, I’m fully expecting this to take all day. So let’s get started! Okay, so you know how usually I come on here and I’m like, I think, it’ll be fine and then it’s super difficult with this one. I was a little nervous.

I don’t know guys – and this has been so easy and I have identified one major difference between this puzzle and the one from 20 years ago with that one, even though they had the same image repeated multiple times on the puzzle. There was no pattern across the entire puzzle, so everything was just kind of randomly dropped onto it, which made it much more difficult to figure out how the different sections fit together, whereas with this one it is just a repeating pattern, and so I was able to Put together this green sign and then from there I did the purple sign and it attaches the same way to all of the green signs you know from there. I could do these little peppermints and the lollipop, and so now I have all of these sections that look exactly the same so from here I can put on the candyland graphic, and then we have this blue sign. We have this purple sign. We have these red gumdrop guys and as each of these sections get big enough eventually I’ll be able to just slot them together and then the puzzle is going to be finished.

So I definitely feel like this is a much lower effort puzzle to create not to put together, I mean from the manufacturing side. it’s a lot easier to make this into a puzzle because with the old one they had the entire image and then they built that out so that nothing repeated across the entire thing, whereas with this one you know you can download repeating patterns of literally anything, you Can think of it’s what they use to make fabric, so they literally would just have to download that pattern, throw it onto a puzzle and then they’re done, there’s no other design work to do, and so that also just makes it much easier and much less exciting. I guess to do it as a puzzle, because it’s just so repetitive that there’s no real difficulty here so don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely enjoying it, I’m having fun, because it’s going together really easily, but for a puzzle series that literally calls itself impossible. This is so far from impossible, all right!

Well, as you can see, I now have basically the entire structure of the puzzle figured out. I’Ve made it to all four edges getting to this point from the last time that I checked in was only just over an hour, so I am just flying through this puzzle. As you can see, this is a very clear grid, like I have almost the exact same shape leftover between everything that i’ve put together so far. I do have some thoughts on how this could be made more difficult, so I’m gonna talk about those later for now, I’m just going to finish it up and I did it now. I’ll, be totally honest.

I have not been feeling my best today. I’Ve had a headache all day. I felt nauseous and just really tired. So I’m really glad that this was an easy puzzle that I was taking on today, because if it was any more difficult I would not have been filming today. So my final time on the candyland puzzle, three hours and 47 minutes. I think  That’s pretty good for a puzzle that they claim to be impossible.

Also thinking back to yesterday, oh my god, I was so out of it. I was so sick. I don’t know why. I was filming if I was not that sick um, I probably could have done this even a little bit faster, okay, so part of the reason why this was so easy. Is that not only is it just a repeating pattern, but the pattern is just straight up and down lining up with the cut of the puzzle pieces.

So if I’m looking to put in a piece every time that type of piece appears, it is straight up and down or straight across, so I can just kind of look in a grid until I find where it goes in there’s one thing that would have made This so much more difficult, and it literally would have taken them like two seconds to do. All they would have had to do is turn the design. So it’s at an angle from the piece cut anytime. You have something on an angle in a puzzle. It is way more difficult than a straight line, so then you wouldn’t have ended up with you know the very clear grid like how I had about halfway through also I’m trying to remember if this one has any kind of hidden image like that one had the Big ben, I feel like they may have gotten rid of that aspect of these puzzles.

 That’s fine, that wasn’t you know the main attraction anyway. Also, one more thing to bring up about this puzzle is that it’s very inexpensive to buy, and that is definitely reflected in the piece quality, not the pieces themselves. I mean the printing is totally fine, it’s very saturated and clear, but these pieces do not lock together at all, it is so loose. You cannot pick up big sections. You have to move it, maybe like four pieces at a time.

Okay, so before I go, I just want to talk about the difference between a puzzle being challenging versus frustratingly difficult, because I think a lot of casual puzzlers just never really think about the difference. So a puzzle like this phone’s puzzle is challenging because they ended up with the perfect balance where they gave you just enough information to be able to move forward, but not quite enough. So you really had to use your brain to like try to spot how these sections fit together, because there are enough different elements. You know, like the different colors of the phones, the different sizes of the phones, these shadows. In the background, the different size text there’s enough that you always feel like you’re making progress, and you can be certain, as you put in each piece, that it is correct, whereas puzzles like these, which people send me sometimes wanting me to do.

Those types of puzzles are just difficult for the sake of being difficult and there’s nothing wrong with that. I do puzzles like that all the time here on this channel, but there is a difference between just having the same color or texture over a huge area and it just being difficult, because you can’t separate out the pieces versus something like this. Where you can separate out the pieces and just figuring out how they fit together is a fun challenge, so I hope I’ve given you something to think about. If you are a more casual puzzler and you’re looking for something more challenging, but you don’t want to be just like frustrated [, Music ], so back to the candyland puzzle, as I’ve been saying um, this one is neither challenging nor difficult for an expert puzzler. This could definitely be a challenge for a beginner puzzler, and I actually do really like that puzzles with extra little twists like this are available so widely and at such a low price point, because it does help.

People see that there are so many ways to do it. A jigsaw puzzle – and there are so many different rules and challenges that you can apply to make them more interesting. You know I do puzzles with these types of rules all the time where I don’t do the edge first or I don’t look at the picture, so it was really fun to do a puzzle that kind of forces you into those challenges. Also, just one more thing about the twist of having extra pieces, it’s definitely a way easier to have extra pieces than it is to be missing a piece you just have to get in the mindset of instead of picking up a piece and trying to figure out Where it goes because that could be one of the pieces that doesn’t go anywhere instead, you have to pick a spot on the puzzle and then try to find the piece that fits there. And if you do it that way, eventually you’re guaranteed to find that piece and then everything  That’s left are just your extra pieces, [, Music, ], all right.

So I’m sure it is fairly easy to tell from the rest of this video that, if you want to try these out, I would recommend the older ones over the newer ones. These are not at all rare, they made so many of these. You can actually find them on ebay for probably about the same price as buying the new ones, and they did come out with a lot of different designs. Looking at the designs, I can definitely see how some of them would be more difficult than others, and I think I got one  That’s on the easier side so without having done any of these puzzles just looking at the pictures. This is about the difficulty rating that I would expect all right.

So I’d love to know in a comment: have you ever done a puzzle from this brand? Did you like it? If you haven’t done one? Is this the type of challenge that you would be interested in taking on, remember that you can head over to patreon right now and for only three dollars a month you can get access to a ton of bonus puzzle material for this video in honor of doing A puzzle with phones all over it. I actually pulled out all of my old phones and I shot a little extra clip of where I was in my life at the time that I had each of those phones, so that is up on patreon right now.

Um, you need a code word for the comments. I think it will be impossible for some reason I kept wanting to call these impuzzables, but impossible is a different brand of puzzles. These are the impossibles puzzles, happy puzzling!