Ravensburger - Disney Villainous: Jafar 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

Jafar's gallery, hung by Jafar, and the only picture allowed to be large is the one of him. Twenty-odd gold frames on a near-black wall, with the cobra staff leaning in from the left edge as if he has just put it down.

What you are looking at

The big arched frame right of centre holds Jafar himself, in the vizier's black and red robes, staff in hand, standing in a Moorish doorway. Everything else on the wall is the rest of Aladdin reduced to portrait size: Jasmine, Aladdin, the Genie in blue, Abu, Rajah the tiger, Iago the parrot, the Sultan, the tiger's head at the Cave of Wonders, the palace of Agrabah, the magic carpet, the lamp.

Two of the frames show his transformations, the giant cobra and the red genie, and both are lit differently from everything else. A small plaque near the middle reads Jafar. On the floor in front, a tall dark ornament on a gold stand. Above, two hanging lamps burning red on one side and green on the other, which is where all the colour in the picture comes from.

What it is like to build

Split the box into frame and not-frame before anything else. Every frame is gold, every frame is a closed rectangle or arch, and every frame has its own pattern of moulding. One frame piece tells you which picture it belongs to and which side of it, and there is no other cue in this puzzle that gives you two facts at once.

Then each framed scene is twenty to forty pieces with its own palette, which makes this an unusually good puzzle to do in short sittings. Finish a frame, stop, come back.

The wall is the last job and it is genuinely hard. It is close to black, textured faintly, and it fills every gap. The two lamps throw a red wash on one side and a green wash on the other, so sort the dark pieces by which of those tints they carry. That split is the only thing separating them and it works better than you would expect.

Why Ravensburger for a dark licensed image

Made in Germany since 1891, no two pieces share a shape. On a picture where a quarter of the area is near-black wall, the fit is the only feedback left once the picture stops helping. The low-glare linen laminate is doing real work here too, because a dark image under a lamp on a glossy board is unreadable.

Specifications

A little context

Villainous is the collector end of licensed puzzles and the format is why it works: each villain gets a wall telling their own story, so there is something to read for the whole ten hours rather than a poster of a face. We carry Scar and Gaston in the same 1000 piece format, and Worst Comes Prepared at 2000 if you want the whole cast at once. More at Disney.

This one is out at the moment and we would rather say so than take your money. Ask to be told the moment it returns and you will hear from us first. Free shipping Australia wide over $150, and free same-day delivery inside 6 km of North Bondi.

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.