This puzzle defeated me once. Let’s try it again.

My nemesis we meet again welcome back to Karen puzzles, so in today’s video I am going to try to solve the mermaid puzzle which defeated my team at the national jigsaw puzzle championships, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two! If you haven’t seen those videos, I have two videos with recap: the entire championships. But if you remember at the teams competition, we finished our first two puzzles and then this was the third puzzle which is really difficult because most of it is blue. So we only got two-thirds of it done, so you guys wanted to know if I just solved it here on my own. How long is it gonna take, and I want to know that too, just to be totally clear.

The recap: videos from the Championships were sponsored by ravensburger. This video is not sponsored, I’m just doing this for fun, although I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that the Karen puzzles Puzzle is available. Now on Amazon, we’ve passed the pre-order date. It is fully available now you can go onto Amazon and order. It and it’ll get shipped out, so many people have gotten theirs already and it is so exciting.

Every time someone sends me a photo. So if you’re looking for a Christmas gift for yourself or for someone who loves puzzles, I’ve got the perfect one for you right here all right. So I have tried to recreate the physical conditions for this puzzle as much as I can. I put down a black tablecloth. I have this big white foam board. I have the exact same trays that we used during the competition.

I even have one of these bags, so let’s just throw it in here like it’s just for fun, although I am not going to be specifically speed running this um, I’m just gonna take my time and have fun with it. My only goal is to finish it in under five and a half hours, which was the total time for the team’s competition and just to refresh your memory. These are the times when the five teams who did finish this puzzle um these are their times for finishing it. Obviously, my time is going to be much longer, since I am one person and all of those were four people and also one more disclaimer and then I’ll get started. If I am missing any pieces, it is 100 our fault and not Raven’s Burgers, as you saw in the video um puzzle, pieces were just flying everywhere, so we could have left some behind on the floor or something I don’t know we’ll we’ll find out and start Is it going okay, it’s going here.

We go. Oh man, some of the pieces are still together from when we had um started putting it together. So I think, as I do, the Sorting I’m gonna separate those. So I’m truly starting from scratch. We are at an hour and four minutes and I have just finished the entire Edge.

Luckily, no Edge pieces are missing. I also did just a little bit on this little Treasure Chest. Then I have all of the red pieces. I have all of the yellow pieces. I have all of these kind of scaly Dragon pieces and I have all of the rest of the pieces which I’m gonna have to go back through and do another sort after I finish all of these, so I’m two hours and 53 minutes into it, and Here is how far I’ve gotten as you can see.

I obviously started with the same spots that we did in the competition um the yellow sand, this red uh, octopus, no squid type of guy and actually since we’re at almost the same time as we had to work on it during the competition. I can compare my own progress to my team’s progress. Uh, I’m definitely a little slower on my own. I decided to leave all of the little redfish until a little later, because I just remember how difficult they were and I’m not looking forward to that part, but so far I’m definitely enjoying this way more. I mean it’s way easier to do a puzzle when you’re alone in your apartment.

You can focus on just that. So I don’t know if I’m gonna make my five and a half hour goal, but uh yeah, I’m really enjoying this one. I would keep going except that it’s four o’clock and because of daylight savings, it’s already getting dark and I’ll brighten it up um, obviously for the video, but I can barely even see some of the details on the pieces anymore. So I think it’s time to call it for the day, also notice how in my voiceover, I said that if I did it again, I would start with um the dragon in the middle clearly have not even started tackling that yet, but I will get to it. I mean I’m gonna have to do it. The benefits of doing a puzzle for fun and not for competition is that you can take a break and come back to it with fresh eyes, so it is day two of the mermaids puzzle.

I actually already worked on this for a little bit early this morning like before I got dressed, so you already saw that footage. It is actually Thanksgiving day today, so I got up early. I worked on the puzzle for a bit. Then I watched the parade. I have all afternoon to work on the puzzle again and then I’m going to my friend’s place for a friendsgiving dinner tonight.

It is 78 degrees out and sunny here in La. I have all the windows open. It is a beautiful day honestly, like what else can you ask for in a day so this morning, as you saw, I worked on this corner and I remember during the competition Katie was working on these like squiggly tall plants, and I was working on the red Fish – and I have now realized it – is so much easier to just do them simultaneously. Like I remember at one point she looked over and was like that’s where all the pieces I was looking for went also. I got the top and the bottom connected, which is always super satisfying to see, and I actually think I just spotted another piece, and I know where that goes there.

We go so okay, what’s next, what’s the plan because we are just under four hours now um, I feel like I’m not gonna finish it in the next hour and a half but we’ll see. So I actually think I might try to do a little bit more in this corner, because we have this black background that you really don’t see anywhere else on the puzzle and then I’ll probably grab all of these blue scaly Dragon pieces. Try to get this curve finished because that’ll give me a lot here in the middle, then I can do these black and white fish. I can also do these fish, which I was working on during the competition a little bit and they drove me crazy. So we’ll see how it goes today, so that’s the plan. It’s about noon now, so I have about four hours until it gets too dark out to be able to see the puzzle enough.

So let’s get back to it, hit five and a half hours. So there goes my initial time goal, but I definitely think I’ve made more progress than we did during the competition, which means that I’m officially more than two-thirds of the way done and obviously, as there are fewer and fewer pieces, it’s gonna go a lot faster. So I’d estimate – I don’t know another hour, so six and a half hours is my new goal and I’m just having so much fun with this puzzle like discovering all of the sections that I never worked on during the competition and just getting to know it in A way that was just impossible when there was so much going on and we were all kind of fried after doing two complete puzzles already like really sitting down and doing this one for real, I’m really liking it. Thankfully and a half hour later all of the pieces that are left officially fit on one tray, and I have a nice big section down here, which is completely done. That’S so satisfying so I just got to finish up the rest of this purple dragon!

Okay! Well, if I hadn’t watched the parade this morning um, I definitely would have finished it today, but once again it is 4 P.M and I’m losing the light. I can’t even see any of the details of any of the pieces I’m trying to look at. I am seven hours and 15 minutes in so I think maybe I could still make the new uh seven and a half hour goal, but we’re gonna find out tomorrow morning uh once it is light out again of this mermaids puzzle, which remember took the top Team two and a half hours in one sitting to complete this is kind of a fake day.

Three though, because realistically it’s only gonna take me another 10, 15, 20 minutes to finish, but we will finally get to find out if I am missing any pieces. So the bottom half of the puzzle is completely uh complete. This is the piece that I think might be missing, because you can see I separated by shape so uh. These are the pieces without the purple scales. I don’t think it’s either of those.

Unless it’s this one, is it that one? I don’t think it’s that no, it’s not that one, and then I have more of that shape up here. Oh wait! No! Hang on, hang on!

No, it’s this one. Okay, never mind! That piece is not missing. I guess I just couldn’t see it in the dark. Last night, I’m gonna add an extra three seconds to my time, where I’m not puzzling to make up for that piece that I just put in without the time being on pieces of the mermaids puzzle.

One two and the very last piece I did it. Oh, let me stop time. Oh my God, I did it, I did it. I did it. I conquered the mermaids puzzle and we have all the pieces.

We didn’t lose any pieces all right. My final time, seven hours, 27 minutes and 47 seconds, a little bit more than the two and a half hours it took the top team, but just doing it for fun. I really enjoyed the puzzle this time. There are actually like so many different elements, which I guess I just couldn’t get myself to focus on In the Heat of the competition and even though it took longer um. That’S why I think it was easier to do alone, because you have looked at every single part of the image.

So as you’re looking through the pieces, you can identify if a piece is going to go somewhere that you’ve seen before, whereas when you’re doing it with a team, you only see you know a quarter of the image. You don’t look at every single part super closely, and so that’s where really good communication and really good organization is so important, especially for a puzzle like this, where everything is all kind of intermixed and you can’t divide it up into distinct sections. So I actually reached out to Sarah Schuler, who was on the winning team, no snacks to find out what their strategy was and how the heck they did it so quickly and at first what she says is pretty similar to what we did. But then this is key. You have to get all of the pieces off the middle of the board, which we did not do for quite a while, and then this is also key.

This is what I was just talking about. You have to communicate and make sure that you’re seeing the entire puzzle and not just the one corner. So basically, her team did the exact opposite of what my team did, which now makes sense why they won, and we didn’t even finish and then I also just quickly wanted to mention the puzzle: artist Zoe Sadler. She is super talented and has done other puzzle designs to you that all look really fun. This artwork is so beautiful and it really does make a fun puzzle when you’re not trying to speed through it.

So if you want to get this puzzle I’ll have the link down in the video description and, of course, don’t forget that the Karen puzzles Puzzle is available now on Amazon, a bunch of people have already started getting theirs and are starting to solve them. It makes me so happy every time I see a new photo and you still have time to get one before Christmas, all right. So in the comments um, I don’t know. Let me know if you were doing this in a team um which, which part of the picture would you claim your code word for. The comment will be um.

It can’t be a mermaid that’s too obvious um, it’s gonna be a dragon alright. Thank you for puzzling, along with me, I will see you all in the next one.