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I never glance ahead at the next day’s puzzle, so when I pulled this one out, I was surprised. It’s not an image that I think I would say I can’t leave the store without it, but when I started working on it, I really liked the variety and activity on the image. There’s so much going on, from the clowns in the carriage to the woman on the balcony and the jester off to the left. There’s a bit of a Mardi Gras feel to it, but also a sense of playing on the Christian origins of Christmas.

Of the four so far, this was really the most fun because it took more than a handful of minutes to complete. The white lines on black and all of the stars in the background presented a little challenge. I’m hoping that there are more like this in the collection.

The image is “Yuletide Parade” by William Steig.

Today’s puzzle was “Xmas Stories” by Joost Swarte. I liked the quirkiness of this cover and the different stories it did try to tell. Some of them are perhaps a little nonsensical, especially on the surface, but there’s some room for interpretation and storytelling.

I glanced at the box when I was pulling it from the collection, but other than that, I didn’t really take note. So when I was working on putting together the puzzle, I started with the green part on the left down on the bottom until I realized that it was far too long to be at the bottom.

Since I commented on the size of the plastic bag yesterday, I thought I’d include a picture this time. I’m not sure if there are requirements that mean the bag has to be about double the size needed, but this seems excessive. On the plus side, though, there is very little in the way of puzzle dust.

Today’s puzzle was a New Yorker cover from 1985, which is much more recent than the previous day’s. The image is called “Deck the Mantle” by Iris VanRynbach.

There’s really not much complicated about these advent puzzles, but I do really like that they’re all 100 pieces and they’re good quality pieces. This one did have a section of four pieces already put together, which I understand is an irritation for some puzzlers, but I tend to simply shrug my shoulders about it. It’s a bit like a freebie.

I love the small size of the boxes and how sturdy they are. This doesn’t feel like a set of 24 puzzles as I’ve known them in the past. I’ve gotten the collections of 12 puzzles in a box and all you usually get with those is the puzzles in separate bags. Though mixing them all together would make for a fun puzzle. So this is a very nice set. I do wish that they would use less plastic to bag the pieces, or no bag at all. There’s a lot of plastic that comes with puzzles, plastic that I find is unnecessary if the puzzle is sealed, especially if there’s already plastic on the outside holding the box together.