Cloudberries - Hybrids 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

Nineteen animals that do not exist, painted as if they were specimens in a natural history plate. A cat with a rabbit's body. A horse with butterfly wings. A squirrel with the head and neck of a peacock. Nobody explains and it is better for it.

What you are looking at

Each creature is painted separately against a pale wash, in the flat, careful style of an old zoological illustration, which is exactly what makes them unsettling. Among them: a horse with swan's wings, a fish with the head of a mouse, a fawn's head on a plump bird's body, a scorpion with a lizard's front end, a wading bird with something wrong about the crest.

Scattered between them, and just as carefully painted, are corals in dusty pink and pale blue, cream mushrooms, and small succulents. The background is a very soft gradient of mint, cream, lemon and pale blue, with a lot of empty space in it.

What it is like to build

Be clear about this one: it is a pale, low-contrast puzzle and roughly half of it is background. That is the whole difficulty and it is a deliberate design choice, not a shortcoming. If you want something to fight, this is one of the better ones we carry. If you want an easy evening, it is not.

Do the creatures first and treat each as its own small puzzle. They are islands with clean edges and nothing else in the picture shares their colours, so they go together quickly and give you fixed points across the whole board.

Then the background, and the only thing that works is sorting by hue. The gradient runs mint at the top left, through cream, to pale blue and lemon. Lay the pale pieces out as a rough map of the picture before you place any of them, and let the shape finish the job. Ignore brightness, because it is nearly constant everywhere.

Why Cloudberries

Cloudberries are British and they compete on two things: commissioning bold graphic artwork that no legacy brand would print, and unusually thick, low-glare board. The pieces are chunky and hold their shape, which on a puzzle where you will be handling pale pieces repeatedly and squinting at them is worth more than it sounds. A poster is in the box, and on this image you will use it constantly.

Specifications

A little context

Difficulty is a category in its own right, and pale is one of its purest forms. Most hard puzzles are hard because they are dark or repetitive; this one is hard because there is almost nothing there, which is a different and quieter kind of stubborn. It is also the most conversation-starting picture in the range, which is not nothing when it is finished on a table. More of the brand at Cloudberries.

Stock is real and it is in Sydney. Free shipping Australia wide over $150, and free same-day delivery inside 6 km of North Bondi with no minimum.

Built it already? Use the Questions section below and tell us how you found it. Which part fought you, how long it took, and whether you would send someone else to it. We answer every one.