Cobble Hill - Lantern Light 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

A brass lantern sitting on an island of succulents, throwing gold light across them, with koi circling in deep blue water alongside. Painted by Rose Cat Khan, and the picture is split straight down the middle into warm and cold.

What you are looking at

The lantern is the centre of it: a squat brass case with a domed filigree lid and a wire handle, lit from inside so that light rays fan out across the ground underneath it. The ground is a bank of succulents in every colour they come in, jade, teal, coral, plum, gold and dusty pink, with one large orange-gold rosette up in the top right corner.

Down the left, the island drops into water. Koi move through it in orange, white and red, under pink and white water lilies and flat green pads. A pale shoreline of small stones divides the two.

Then there are the things you find rather than see. Butterflies all through it, a red one at the top, a spotted one lower down, small blue and green ones in the water margin. Dragonflies. Lizards on the warm ground. And small gold keys, scattered right across the picture, which are the artist's running joke and worth hunting as you build.

What it is like to build

Split it warm against cold and you have done most of the sorting. The left is blue water, the right is gold and green planting, and the pale pebble shoreline between them is a hard curved edge you can build along. Almost nothing crosses that line.

The succulents are the unusual part, and here colour is the right cue. Normally on a dense picture you sort by shape and ignore colour. Not here: every rosette is the same geometry, a tight spiral of pointed leaves, so shape tells you nothing, while each plant is a distinctly different colour from the ones touching it. Sort the right-hand half into colour piles and each rosette assembles as its own little target.

The lantern and its light rays are the anchor. The brightest object in the frame, with straight gold rays radiating out, and those rays give the ground a direction to work along.

The water is the hard region. Deep blue, low contrast, with only current swirls and a scatter of light specks in it. Leave it, sort it by how dark the blue is, and use the koi and the lily pads as fixed points.

Why the Cobble Hill cut suits this one

Cobble Hill are Canadian, based in Victoria, British Columbia, and they cut a random cut: irregular shapes, no rows or columns, no two pieces alike. On the water, where the picture stops distinguishing itself, the shape carries on doing so. Their own warning applies, do not try to count the pieces, a random cut does not count out neatly. Linen textured board and the poster is in the box, which on a picture with this many small hidden objects you will use.

Specifications

A little context

Saturated fantasy-botanical work like this is a young style in the category and it makes a noticeably different puzzle from a photograph of the same subject: the colour separation is exaggerated on purpose, so regions that would be a nightmare in a photo come apart cleanly. If the koi are the part that appeals, we also carry Koi Pond and Koi River. More at Flowers & Gardens.

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.