It’s National Puzzle Day! For our final National Puzzle Month puzzle review, we are happy to bring you another Gay NYC Dad favorite puzzle master. Flipsi Puzzles have a pirate ship series! You may remember our reviews of Flipsi Puzzles’s Enchanted Places series, and their Christmas series, but for first time readers, I’ll describe them here briefly and in more detail at the end of this post.
Flipsi puzzles are double-sided, so you build the image on the box cover and then flip it over to reveal the surprise image on the back. Flipsi Puzzles has engineered a Flipsi Board, too, that helps you flip the puzzle easily without worrying about the pieces breaking off or the puzzle falling apart!
Flipsi Puzzles come in themed series. The puzzles can be purchased singly, in sets (all three puzzles in the series); and in Flipsi bundles: Flipsi Complete, which includes one puzzle and the Flipsi Board; and Flipsi Plus, which includes all three puzzles in a series, plus the Flipsi Board. The Flipsi Board can also be bought on its own. The Flipsi Board is red velvet with white corners, which show exactly where the puzzle fits. It also is marked “Portrait” and “Landscape” to help you orient the pieces in the board.
TOP TIP: Whichever series you buy first, buy the Flipsi Plus bundle, so you have the Flipsi Board, which can then be used with all of the other Flipsi puzzle series.
What’s in the box?
The Pirate Ships and What Waits in the Deep boxes include the double-sided puzzle pieces and a frameable mini poster of the image on the box. I’m serious when I say you could frame the puzzle image. It’s on high color, high gloss magazine paper, so the image is vibrant and stands up to passing around the table, if you’re doing the puzzle as a group. If you buy the series with the Flipsi Board, the box also includes two clips to clamp the board closed when flipping.
The Pirate Ships and What Waits in the Deep images are gorgeous! The Emerald Dragon Pirate Ship has emerald green sails with a blueish-green hull. There are two other ships on the horizon, but the Emerald Dragon has gone aground, many years ago, based on the skeletons that surround it. The Sailing Lion has garnet red sails and an icy-blue hull. There’s a rowboat heading away from the ship, but its occupant, too, departed a long time ago. Was it the mermaid’s fault? The Ice King is my favorite, both because of the royal purple sails and the icy water it floats in, not to mention all of the birds.
How to solve a Flipsi Puzzle:
First, put the jigsaw puzzle together. The distinction between the sides of the pieces is textural. Both sides are colorful, so you really need to pay attention to make sure you have the right side facing up. The side of the pieces that form the image on the box is sort of bubbled with a faintly linen-like texture, while the reveal side is completely flat. When you hold the pieces in your hand, you can feel the difference. The color might be slightly muted on the back side, but it’s not easily detectable and certainly not as easy as feeling the pieces with your fingertips. The pieces are standard puzzles pieces, with no weird/thematic shapes.
Second, after you’ve spent time admiring the completed puzzle, you flip it to see What Waits in the Deep. If you’ve got the puzzle board, close the board, clamp the sides to prevent the puzzle from sliding out, then flip it over and open the reverse. If you don’t have the Flipsi Board, be very careful when you lift the puzzle and flip it. The secret, reverse images are as incredible as the pictured images. No spoilers here, as usual, but I was completely unable to guess what would be on the reverse. The Ice King was my favorite reveal!
TOP TIP: I use the clamps to keep the puzzle board closed when I’m not working on it, just in case. Why, you might ask? Well, you’ll note in the completed Ice King puzzle that there is a piece missing. You know that horrible trend where someone is showing off their completed puzzle on social media and someone else comes in and pushes the puzzle off the table? Well, that was me. I was both sides of that scenario. It’s so cold here that I was wearing a blanket and it snagged the puzzle, sending it cascading. I looked everywhere, but could not find that missing piece. Until I woke up the next morning and it was literally in the middle of the room. No clue how it reappeared, but I’m happy to have a completed puzzle again.
Flipi Puzzles are a great addition to any puzzle library. And, after you’ve built the puzzle and flipped it, you then have two different building options, if you want to rebuild. If you love a jigsaw challenge (I have a friend who prefers puzzles where she doesn’t know the image), you can try building the reverse image first, but the reveal is so worth it that I would build the image first and then flip it. The puzzles are 500 pieces, so can be done in a few hours or over a few days, and the images are just stunning. There’s something for everyone with Flipsi’s Pirate Ships and What Waits in the Deep series.
TOP TIP: If you’re the type of puzzler who builds the puzzle, then passes it on, hold onto the Flipsi Board, because you’re definitely going to want to use it on the other puzzle series.
This completes another year of National Puzzle Month reviews, but we’ll have plenty of game and puzzle reviews throughout the year. Watch this space!
https://www.flipsipuzzles.com/collections/pirate-ships-what-waits-in-the-deep
٭٭٭٭٭Highly recommended
looks great