60 pieces · NaturePhoto by Vincent Guth on Unsplash (Unsplash License). Soft evening light along the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland — the squat round shape of O'Brien's Tower on the grassy headland at right, the sea stack of Branaunmore standing alone in the surf below, and the banded shale and sandstone wall running away south into pale haze above the Atlantic.
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O'Brien's Tower on the Cliffs of Moher
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O'Brien's Tower on the Cliffs of Moher
This is the Atlantic edge of County Clare, on Ireland's west coast, photographed in the long soft light of a summer evening. The small round building on the skyline at the right is O'Brien's Tower, put up in the 1830s by the local landlord Cornelius O'Brien as a viewing point for the visitors who were already coming to stand on the cliff top even then. It sits almost exactly at the highest part of the Cliffs of Moher, where the ground falls away more than two hundred metres straight into the sea, and the whole cliff line runs on from there for several more kilometres south toward Hag's Head — the receding headlands you can see dissolving into haze on the left of the frame are that continuation, each one a little paler than the one before.
The lone pillar of rock standing out of the surf in the middle of the picture is Branaunmore, a sea stack that was once part of the headland behind it. The cliffs are built of flat-lying beds of shale and sandstone laid down in a river delta around 320 million years ago, and you can read that layering clearly in the face: darker, softer bands of shale alternating with harder, paler sandstone. The sea works on the soft bands first, undercutting the hard ones until a slab drops off, so the cliff retreats inland while staying nearly vertical. A stack like Branaunmore is what is left when the waves cut all the way through a headland and the land behind keeps retreating. Those same ledges, too narrow for anything else to use, are one of Ireland's great seabird cliffs — puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes nest on them through the breeding season, and the white streaking on the rock face is theirs.
As a jigsaw this one is an exercise in patience with the quiet half of the frame. The cliff wall gives you the easy start: it is full of hard horizontal lines, orange-brown ledges and dark green grass on the lip, so those pieces lock together quickly and build a solid right-hand anchor. The sky is the opposite problem — a smooth pale wash from cream at the horizon up to soft lilac, with one thin cloud bar to break it, so sort those by brightness and tackle them as a gradient rather than hunting shapes. The sea is the real work. It shades from almost white near the horizon to deep slate blue at the bottom, and the only landmarks in it are the white lines of swell and the surf collars around the stack and the cliff base. Build outward from Branaunmore and from the foam at the foot of the rock, and the open water fills in far faster than it looks like it will.
How to play
- Tap Play O'Brien's Tower on the Cliffs of Moher puzzle to open the puzzle board, then choose your piece count and difficulty.
- Drag pieces from the tray onto the board and snap them into place until the full image is complete. Works with mouse on desktop and touch on mobile.
- Use the Preview button on the play screen to peek at the full reference image whenever you need a hint.
- When you finish, check your solve time on the completion screen and share it with friends to see who can beat your record.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the round tower on the cliff top?
- It is O'Brien's Tower, built in the 1830s by Cornelius O'Brien, a local landowner and member of parliament, as a viewing platform for sightseers visiting the cliffs. It stands close to the highest point of the Cliffs of Moher and still marks the main viewpoint today, with the visitor centre a short walk inland from it. On a clear day the view from there takes in the Aran Islands in Galway Bay and the hills of Connemara beyond them.
- What is the single rock standing in the sea?
- That is Branaunmore, a sea stack just off the headland below O'Brien's Tower. It used to be joined to the cliff. Waves cut a cave into the base of the headland, the cave broke through into an arch, the arch collapsed, and the pillar that survived was left standing offshore while the cliff behind it kept retreating. Stacks are a normal late stage in how this kind of coast wears back, and the Cliffs of Moher have several.
- Why is the cliff face so obviously striped?
- Because it is made of flat-lying sedimentary beds laid down in a large river delta during the Carboniferous period, roughly 320 million years ago. Layers of mud became shale and layers of sand became sandstone, stacked one on top of the other and never tilted much since. The sandstone bands are harder and stand out as ledges; the shale bands are softer and weather back into shadowed recesses. That difference is what produces the banded look, and it is also why the cliffs fail in clean vertical slabs rather than slumping.
- What nests on the cliffs?
- The Cliffs of Moher are one of Ireland's most important seabird colonies and are protected as a Special Protection Area. Guillemots and razorbills pack the open ledges, kittiwakes build nests on the narrowest shelves, fulmars take the grassy upper edges, and puffins burrow into the soil on the slopes and on Goat Island below the cliffs. Most of them are present only for the breeding season in spring and early summer and spend the rest of the year out at sea, so a photograph taken outside those months shows a far quieter cliff.