4,000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle - World Map Educational Puzzle for Adults & Teens - Perfect for Family Game Night & Home Decor

This is a great puzzle overall. It’s a beautiful map that is very detailed. It’s a hard puzzle which is why I bought it. It required hours and hours of sorting, but’s that’s how I do my puzzles. One suggestion is to go to the dollar store and buy 4 sturdy project boards (not poster board, I mean foam core boards) and do the puzzle in quadrants. If you buy the right kind of board then the puzzle pieces won’t slide at all. Then you can stack the boards up and store them somewhere rather than dedicate a huge table to the puzzle for months (you’re going to need a really big table, the puzzle is bigger than two standard white folding buffet tables or whatever you call them. So a few criticisms that may be important to avid puzzle doers: 1) the puzzle is obviously huge, which is great but the company that made it uses a repeating pattern of cuts. I imagine they sort of had to because it’s so big, but I wish the pattern was more “randomized”. I’ll explain why this is a problem in the next point. So 2) the edge is a nightmare. The fact that literally 90% of the pieces have almost an identical picture isn’t the problem. That is hard but fun in a way. The problem is that if you have identical pictures, plus a repeating pattern of piece cuts, then you can have an entire strip of edge fit perfectly somewhere but actually be in the entirely wrong area of the puzzle, and not even know it. Anyways it’s not enough to ruin the whole puzzle but it’s definitely an oversight by the manufacturer. 3) the completed puzzle isn’t very tight. What I mean is most high quality puzzles, once they are done, are locked together and become one huge piece of cardboard. Another way to explain what I’m saying is with this puzzle you can use your forefinger and thumb and separate the pieces slightly, creating an ever so slight gap in the rows. Not only does this make it not feel as solid, but it makes it extremely delicate. If you plan on making portions of the puzzle on a separate surface or table, you’re going to have a really hard time moving and implementing that section into the main puzzle. And if you plan on framing this puzzle it will be a nightmare. 4) The cover picture has the company name and logo plastered all over the side, covering the exact picture that you might want to use as you’re making the puzzle, so you’re left guessing what’s under that section of the cover. There is no full picture of any reasonable size anywhere else on the box, and I couldn’t find a digital picture on their site which would have been a great compromise. Anyways I hate to sound like I’m bashing the puzzle. It’s nice, a lot of fun, and again the picture is beautiful. It’s very challenging which is why I bought it. But for $50 I wish that it didn’t have a repeating cut pattern especially on the edge, that there was a full picture available somewhere, and that all the pieces locked tight when it’s done.As with all puzzles, especially big ones, you need to be patient and persistent. This puzzle was received well packaged and within the delivery time frame. I was able to complete it within 18 days, in a total of 60 hours or so. For this puzzle, you will need a magnifying glass and it would be helpful if you use the web maps. I usually start assembling a puzzle by joining the outer pieces (the frame), but with this one, the outer pieces were more challenging as they had the same color. So I started with the flags as they seemed to be the easiest part. While doing that, I also assembled parts of the two small round maps of the poles, the small ship and the compass. After that I joined the lines of the inner frame. This puzzle has a lined inner frame, which is helpful when connecting the outer frame. You have to be careful when connecting the outer frame, some pieces has exactly the same shape and almost the same color. After assembling the outer frame, I noticed a difference in the color shades in some areas, even though the pieces fits perfectly from all three sides (the fourth side is the outer straight line). I had to relocate about fifteen pieces or so. You can tell the difference by the shade of the color. After that I connected the Equator and the Meridian lines, then the lines of the tropics as well as the Arctic line. The next step, I sorted out the pieces that had no words or numbers (had only color) and kept them in the box till the end. I should have done that in the beginning, learn from my mistake. These were mostly parts of the oceans, Russia, and China. This step reduced the number of unfinished pieces and made it easier for me to search for the other pieces. Then I connected the big words such as North America, Australia, North Atlantic Ocean and so on. The final step was to connect the pieces which had only color (no letters or numbers), so I sorted them out into groups by the shape of the piece. It was challenging to complete, but once you see it in a frame on your wall you feel that all the hard work was worth it. One note to the manufacturer, to make it easier for us, it would be helpful if you include a poster of the picture (high resolution picture) with the puzzle. Especially because the large letters on the box covers one fourth of the picture. Moreover, the low resolution of the picture on the box makes it difficult for us to read the names of the cities and other places.goodMy son bought me this puzzle as a gift and I’m working on it now. There is no poster and the box picture is so tiny you can barely see it. The description says it comes with a poster.This is an extremely difficult puzzle to complete and is very large. My uncle has is spread out on three different tables. Everything looks the same on the puzzle pieces. Hint: use Google maps to figure out where the pieces go.Das war damals (2014) mein erstes 4000er Puzzle. Und bis jetzt mit Abstand das beste. Sowohl von der Qualität der Teile, vom Schnitt und vorallem Motiv. Der Schnitt ist einzigartig, also passt nicht fast jedes Teil in ein anderes, keine einzige Nase der Teile war verbogen oder löste sich vom Puzzleteil (leider keine Seltenheit bei anderen Herstellern). Es gibt im Motiv genug markante Stellen, an denen man sich orientieren kann. Die schwierigen Stellen sind das Wasser und das Landesinnere wie z.B. in Russland.Ich habe die Karte mit Puzzlekleber fixiert, an ein Stoff geklebt, lakiert und mit Holzbalken oben und unten versehen. Die karte hängt jetzt seit 5 Jahren an der Wand (Sonnenseite) und bis jetzt weder von der Leuchtkraft noch von der Schönheit verloren.Keiner der Gäste mag glauben das es tatsächlich ein normales Puzzle war, es ist immer ein Gesprächsthema. Ich kann das Puzzle nur empfehlen.Having previously completed puzzles with over 9000 pieces , I assumed that this one would be a "doddle" in comparison - how wrong I was !!!As other reviewers have already said , the border , arctic regions , flags etc etc are relatively straight forward and progress can be achieved fairly quickly. However once those segments are out of the way you soon realise 2 very important facts . Firstly , the only reference picture supplied is the front face of the container box in which the puzzle is shipped and is far, far, far, too small a scale to be of any help whatsoever without the use of a magnifying glass . Come on EDUCA , surely it wouldn't be too much to ask for a bigger scale reference picture to be supplied with the puzzle ? Secondly , it soon becomes apparent just how much of the Earth's surface is covered with blue water !!I spent many long days making very slow progress , spending sometimes up to 10 hours laborious hours attempting to make some noticeable progress.After 4 weeks of almost non stop " puzzling " I managed to insert the final piece and have now sealed it with Contractors PVA , mounted it onto a board , inserted it into a purpose made frame and it now occupies pride of place on our lounge wall , and admired by all who see it.The puzzle arrived on time and in good condition. Took me about a month to put together. It was not as hard as I originally thought because the map contains loads of names and straight lines, which help a lot. Not only is the jigsaw puzzle a great fun but I also love the final result. Can't wait to hang the map up on the wall. (BTW, I did not know but this maker apparently sends out missing pieces to their puzzles. it's written on the box and they also claim to be the only company that does that. Just handy to know, I suppose.)Just brilliant, I’m really enjoying doing this one, now about 3/4’s done and can’t wait to see the finished article! On the only negative point I found a piece with the word “Wuhan” on it and I almost threw it away!!!!?I like its complexity that urged me for the first time to use Maps app for solving Africa and S America. Very strange shapes for the first time I met but I could deal with quite quickly. Still something...around 800 pcs to complete and what you can see took 1 month. Last 4000 took 4 months so much quicker for this last one as long as are lot of clear patterns to be fitted. Looking for the next one so big as this. All JP I ordered I got on time and in good condition. As a very small minus, one order placed last year in late summer has been lost but I got refund and placed again got it on-time.