Thames & Hudson - Shakespeare's Flowers 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

A circular puzzle, not a rectangular one, and every flower in it is one Shakespeare actually wrote about. Forty-odd botanical studies arranged as a mandala on deep teal, with their names hand-lettered between them.

What you are looking at

An illustration by Rebecca Harris for Thames & Hudson. The flowers are drawn as specimens, each one separate and labelled: carnation, daffodil, lavender, aloe, violet, woodbine, strawberry, clover, pease, iris, pansy, primrose, cornflower, honeysuckle, ivy. They radiate outward from the centre in rings, so the whole thing reads as a wreath.

Moving through them are insects painted at the same botanical scale: an orange-tip butterfly, a brimstone, bees, a ladybird, a spider on a thread. The ground is a single deep petrol teal, which is what makes the colours sit up. Around the outer edge runs a quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and each flower is keyed to a Shakespearean line in the booklet in the box.

What it is like to build

A round puzzle changes the first hour and nobody tells you this. There are no corners, so the usual opening move is gone. Every edge piece has one curved side, and because the curve is part of a single large circle, the arcs are all subtly different rather than interchangeable. Lay the edge pieces out in a loose ring by how sharply they curve and they will resolve, but it takes longer than a rectangle and it is worth expecting.

Then work outward from the middle, not inward from the edge. The design is radial, so the flowers sit in rings and each ring is a different scale. Once you have found the centre, the rings tell you roughly how far out any given piece belongs.

The lettering is the best anchor in the box and there is a lot of it. The names are pale on dark and unmistakable. The hard region is the teal ground itself, which is flat and fills every gap between specimens. Leave it, and finish it on shape.

Why this one is worth knowing about

Thames & Hudson are an art book publisher rather than a puzzle brand, and it shows in the things they get right: the printing is matt with genuinely deep blacks, the reference booklet is not an afterthought, and the subject has actually been researched. It also shows in the things they do not do, which is any kind of piece-fit engineering. The cut is ordinary. You are buying this for the image and the idea.

Specifications

A little context

Round puzzles are rare and they are worth trying once precisely because the edge is a real problem to solve rather than a formality. If you like a puzzle that also teaches you something, this is the strongest example in the range: you finish it knowing which flowers Elizabethans grew and what Shakespeare said about them. The rest of the publisher's list is at Thames & Hudson.

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.