Wrap Up: Talkin’ All That Jazz

Talkin’ All that Jazz by Tim Okamura was fast, but oh, it was so fun! The pieces locked together so well, that even when working on her shirt, it was easy to feel when a piece was in the wrong spot, even if it was *thisclose* to being right. Pretty sure I did that several times with the same piece in the same spot. This puzzle was a joy to work on.

E joined us for part of it, and she kept saying she would love to sleep on the puzzle, because the finish on the pieces were so soft. Easily the highest quality puzzle we have done so far. No longer an assumption, as in the next up post, but verifiable fact. The fit, the finish, the feel, just all of it was absolutely incredible. You can see the poster board we use to flip is under it because by the time my initial photos uploaded and I had realized they hadn’t turned out, I had already slid the poster board under. And it didn’t pop up ANY of the pieces! One person (me) was able to fully place the flip board under without messing up the puzzle at all.

As per usual, we started with the edges, and I added the more recognizable poster bits inside the edges as I went. Eventually, Clark focused on putting together the show fliers, and I focused on putting together the person. He finished the posters first, and then we moved what I had of the person, which was mostly done, inside. To move it, we ended up having to dismantle parts on both the person and the posters to be able to slide them together. The three of us worked on the arms and the surrounding shirt to finish the best puzzle we’ve done yet.

Taking our cues from the fliers in the puzzle, we listened to Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, and as I write this, Billie Holiday. While working on this fantastic piece of art, we took the opportunity to educate E further on black culture, black struggle, and the history of jazz. We were pleasantly surprised to know that she had already learned about Ella Fitzgerald in her elementary school’s music class. Part of the conversation arose when I realized I was inflating the size of the person’s hair in scale, and though it may be that I had the scale wrong for the puzzle, we used that as an opportunity to discuss implicit bias, and how we can work to overcome that, even in the smallest ways.

We have another Apostrophe Puzzles puzzle in our stack of puzzles, and we will definitely be doing it soon. At least, I think we’ll be doing it soon. We loved this so much we want to do another one, but at the same time, if we do it next, we’ll have seven puzzles to do before we need to buy more. Maybe we need to save this one, and savor it a little more, perhaps in three or four puzzles?

Bottom Line: This puzzle was awesome, highly recommend both the puzzle and the company.

Happy Puzzling! xo, j