Ravensburger - New York Skyline 2000 Piece Adult's Jigsaw Puzzle

The Brooklyn Bridge in the foreground and Lower Manhattan behind it, at 2000 pieces and just under a metre wide. Shot at sunset, so the sky does about a third of the work.

What you are looking at

One of the bridge's stone towers fills the middle of the picture, its two gothic arches open to the sky, with the main cables sweeping down and the suspender cables dropping in a fine vertical comb. An American flag flies from the top. The deck runs away to the left on its stone piers.

Behind it, the financial district: One World Trade Center, the tapered glass tower with the spire, catching the last light; the rippled facade of a residential tower to its right; a half-built tower with a crane; and a dense mass of older blocks going down to the waterfront. The East River runs across the bottom. Above it all, a sky graded from deep violet at the top through pink to a hard orange band on the horizon, with heavy cloud through it.

What it is like to build

The cables are the gift and almost nobody uses them first. They are fine, pale, precisely angled lines against dark stone and bright sky, and no two of them run at the same angle. A cable piece can be placed to within a few centimetres on angle alone. Take them early and you have a skeleton across the middle of the picture.

Then the stone tower, which is a large solid mass of warm grey with two black arches in it, and the single most legible object in the frame.

The buildings are the long middle and they are the hard part, not the sky. Hundreds of pieces of window grid at small scale, mostly grey-blue, all similar. Sort them by the direction the facade faces: the towers catching the sunset are warm on one side and cold on the other, and that split holds right across the skyline.

The sky is easier than it looks because it is a strong gradient with real cloud structure. Sort it in horizontal strips by colour and work down.

Why Ravensburger at 2000

Made in Germany since 1891, no two pieces share a shape even at this count. Worth measuring the table: at 98 x 75 cm this needs close to a metre of clear surface and will not come off a dining table between sittings. Thick board, linen texture, low glare.

Specifications

A little context

City skylines are among the most bought and most abandoned puzzles in the category, and the reason is nearly always the same: a skyline is a repeating grid, and a grid with no landmark in it is punishing. What makes this one work is that a very large, very distinctive object has been put in front of the grid. If you are choosing a cityscape, choose one with a bridge, a river or a foreground in it. More at Cities & Landmarks.

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.