Photographer: unknown
Maker: unknown
Count: 105 pieces
Final size: approx. 10 x 20″
Pieces: Ribbon cut, average
Quality: N/A
Skin irritation: Bothersome (from screen)

Ok this might seem weird to some of you, but I guess I’m turning into a real puzzle fanatic (my husband says I’m addicted to puzzles ha ha).

I did this puzzle via the on-screen entertainment on the flight home last week, and thought it would be amusing to take pictures of my progress, just like I do with physical puzzles. It was a game called Puzzle Travel Showcase. There were ten puzzles included, and at the end of each one you get a little trophy symbol like shown above, the idea is to complete them all. I thought I would do most of them (the other famous landmarks were nice enough, though I had no interest in a picture of race cars), however at the end I decided this really was not for me and pulled out my physical mini puzzles.

I’ve done online puzzles quite a few times, so this was interesting to compare. It worked a little differently. The programs I’ve used online (can’t remember their names now) usually let you spread pieces out across both the space the finished puzzle fits in, and all the surrounding area on the screen. Pieces lock into place (with a little click or other sound) when you have them in the correct place on an invisible grid, and if you get two pieces together they will stay together so you can drag the group around to reposition. I think one program even had pieces in random orientations, and you had to rotate them until you got the right fit. 

This one, pieces were always the same orientation. There were a few choices of piece count, 105 being the highest. I could pick to have the completed picture showing faintly to work on top of, or a grid of the piece outlines to match up to, or nothing at all on my screen (but in the corner could toggle to see the image guide if desired). I went with the last option. In this game, you can’t spread the pieces out beyond the board space (there isn’t much margin anyways). On the bottom of the screen there’s a row of pieces and you can click through them one by one, or scroll, and reposition them. That slowed me down a bit, I’m not used to shuffling through pieces without all of them being visible.

The game would not let me drag groups of pieces, if I had to move them it was be one at a time. Another annoying thing was that every time you let go of a piece, it makes a little snick sound, even if it’s not in the right place. Pieces that don’t belong together will do this too, giving you false fits. I’ve never seen a digital puzzle that would do false fits before. Here’s one below:

When you get a piece into its proper place, it makes a brighter chime kind of sound, and a little sparkle. And then it’s locked into place, you can’t move it again. At the very end, all the piece outlines disappear in the final picture, which I don’t particularly like (I’ve seen this in other online puzzle games). I want to see the pieces making the whole, not a photograph on my screen, if that makes sense. So I show next-to-the-last step without the final piece in, just to get as close to that satisfying final as possible.

The size is of course a guess, I’m estimating what it was on the screen in front of me.

As for the mechanics, I could either use my finger on the touch screen, or up/down, right/left controls on a remote. While it was far more intuitive for moving pieces, the former got tiresome quickly because touch screens cause me skin pain. Using the remote controls was no discomfort, but awkward at first because I don’t do a lot of gaming- another thing that slowed me down and made this puzzle take more time than usual for a small piece count (which is fine when you’re on an eight hour flight!) I didn’t find that either method was one that I’d want to use for an extended time period. But it was diverting enough for a while.

Completed on 1/4/26.