4,000 Piece Puzzle - The World Map

Fantastic puzzle overall and definitely worth purchasing and doing! Took 14 days working every day and probably totaled close to ~70-80 hours of time. Piece quality is good, nice thickness, and no pieces were bent, torn, peeling, damaged, etc... Pieces fit together well and stay together, but moving pieces around will cause them to fall apart if you try to pick them up. Text on the pieces is clear and legible, allowing you to quickly place lots of places at least in the general area where they need to go, however the writing on the box is extremely small and very difficult to read even with great eyesight as others have mentioned, but it is possible. A poster would REALLY be helpful on this puzzle. Another thing to be very aware of is that the border pieces all contain a repeating pattern and border pieces will fit precisely with numerous other incorrect border pieces, so be extremely careful to make sure the pattern lines up perfectly or it will waste a lot of time and be frustrating at the end. Even paying attention I misplaced 4-5 border pieces and had to comb over the pattern to readjust them. This is the 1st puzzle I've not started with the border, and instead did the flags, and colored band just inside the border first, in order to have a 2nd point of reference to check that the border pieces are correctly placed and fit from multiple sides.After the flags and borders, I'd suggest sorting out the latitude and longitude lines with numbers as this will really help you place other pieces later by referencing them using them as an X & Y axis grid . Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn lines are also easy to sort out and give more reference points, as well as the mini globes and compass section, ship, and then I moved onto the land and finally the water.Definitely thought I was missing a few pieces that I struggled to find, but in the end every single one was there. Very rewarding puzzle and now the only question is whether to glue and keep it, or put it away to do again someday...

I got this puzzle mid March 2023, and just finished it in mid June 2023. I would have finished it sooner but there were several incidents that involved taking apart areas I had done and re-doing them, and an incident with a puppy on the table eating some of the pieces. I HIGHLY recommend putting a length of felt underneath the puzzle, to stop the pieces from moving around. These pieces fit together loosely, so it might be a perfect fit, but since it fits loosely, it is hard to be sure that it is the correct fit. And, there are MANY false fits within the puzzle. What that means is there is a puzzle piece shape that fits exactly into a spot, but it is the wrong piece, there is another piece out there that is identical in shape but maybe has slightly different shading on it, that is supposed to go there. Watch out for the border, there are false fits on there but keep a keen eye on the swirl pattern, and the pieces will match up. Follow all dotted lines on their path to make sure the correct pieces are in the correct places. Make sure each piece is in the correct direction. All the little islands are tricky, because some are so small they take up less than one puzzle piece, so keep an eye on the overall shape of the section. I would recommend doing the flags first, then the border, then the cross section north south and east west lines, dividing the puzzle into quarters. I did the land pieces first and then the oceans, but even though it seems like the land pieces will be easy, there are still many difficulties. Overall you will have a lot of fun completing this, and it's cool to learn the geography as well!

I love puzzles and normally can accomplish a 1000 piece puzzle in a day. This puzzle was VERY difficult and took countless hours to complete, but I will say it is worth it. The details are amazing and the finished product makes for wonderful art to frame and hang. I strongly recommend using Google maps to help find some of the locations as the print on the box is very tiny and there is no poster included. Otherwise, well worth the purchase!!