You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
The Global Puzzle!
It’s a 600 piece ball buster show casing every single square foot of the Earth.
It has every country, every line of latitude, every tiny island hiding in the Pacific.
This puzzle is so comprehensive I swear it shows Sam the Hobo in that Jakarta dumpster.
That’s crazy.
This puzzle is a snap shot of the entire Earth and all of it crammed into a 3′ by 1′ foot visual.
Talk about minutia.
Bamako is the capital of Mali . Paris is the capital of France. Bogota is the capital of Colombia.
You got that? There could be a test at the end of this post.
600 pieces, and none of them bigger than a single celled protozoa. If that is not challenging enough, try putting together puzzle pieces that are “actually shaped like individual countries.”
Mexico is cut like Mexico. Singapore looks like Singapore. Hawaii is a tiny little piece of cardboard cut like Hawaii.
It has everything but the locals calling you howli.
The puzzle guys tout this feature as a desirable marketing tool but trust me, its a pain in the ass.
Argentina is so skinny it looks like a cardboard Sports Illustrated model on diuretics.
Why am I grumbling? Because many of these pieces don’t inter lock with anything. That means you just take a weird country like Guinea and slide it next to Sierra Leone. They don’t want to be neighbors, they don’t want to lock together, they just simply co-exist. But knock the board or a dog whips its tail, and BAM, Sierra Leone is on the other side of the globe.
This puzzle is exceedingly puzzling.
Not only is it physically demanding, it also reminds me I am a geographic moron.
I had no idea where the Sudan is located in Africa. I didn’t know the Maldives Islands are near India. I now see that I have spent much of my life as a Geographical retard. I am one of those people that Jay Leno might make fun of on his Jay Walking segment.
Where is the Black Sea?
Uhhhmmmm?
Fail.
It’s between Russia and Eastern Europe for those keeping score.
70 percent of the map is ocean. That’s problematic because the ocean is basically different shades of blue. The Atlantic is a dark blue and the ocean off the United States is a slightly lighter shade of blue while the ocean around Australia is just blue.
Got it?
Try putting 200 pieces of blue together.
Yikes.
If this was a puzzle featuring a basket of kittens, I would feel much more secure about my geographical acumen right about now. I could match a cute whisker to a cute ear to a cute nose. But you can’t match Ghana to Western Africa. Nobody likes anybody in Africa.
My 12 year old decided this was to be our weekend project. He picked the puzzle. He said it would be fun and educational. He has been on a one man pilgrimage to conquer the globe.
He is a tiny Alexander the Great looking for global domination.
I have done about a quarter of the work. He has done the rest. My problem is my old man eyes. The puzzle is so small I need a magnifying glass to see the countries.
This puzzle should come with an electron microscope. It would be easier to dissect cytoplasm with a mixing spoon.
Hopefully we’ll finish this laborious labor of love. The way the world is changing, we better hurry up. We might not have the proper countries to lock together for very much longer.
I know everyone wants Tripoli to fall, I just want it to hold on till I put the damn pieces into place.
That’s Crazy.
