This puzzle broke my brain!

So, Karen Puzzles. Yes, she really does! This girl has got it going on. She has a huge YouTube following, a Patreon following, an Instagram following…well you get the idea. She is tireless and has gained a huge audience in the four years she’s been creating for her YouTube channel.

As a jigsaw puzzle influencer, Karen teamed up with Ravensburger to create two puzzles. Such an amazing opportunity. I cannot even imagine how much fun it was to work on creating your very own puzzle.

Karen’s first puzzle with Ravensburger is a whopper of a 3000 piece puzzle called Karen Puzzles. The second is brand new this week and is called Gradient Cascade.

Is the Gradient Cascade right for you?

In this article I’ll review the features and benefits of Gradient Cascade.

Karen’s Gradient Jigsaw Puzzle

Just The Deets For The Gradient Cascade

Something Meta

This new puzzle is actually 7 puzzles in one. Each of the puzzle “pieces” is a mini puzzle which fit into the overall larger puzzle. This actually gives you options for completing the puzzle. It’s something new and groovy and I really love the idea!

Cut Style

The Gradient Cascade puzzle has a grid cut, except where the pieces intersect with the mini puzzles. You will find many, many, many edge pieces when sorting, but the overall frame for the mini puzzles (which is how I think of the puzzle parts that aren’t the mini puzzles) is a typical ribbon cut.

Materials

As is usual with Ravensburger, the material is made from extra thick custom developed European blue board. The museum quality linen paper means the image will not peel up and also ensures a glare-free puzzle.

Image Quality and Resolution

Image quality is super important when selecting a puzzle. The image is crisp which we’ve come to expect from Ravensburger. But, I have to admit I was not a fan of all the grey in the background. Why grey? Why so much of it? Bleh!

Does Jen Recommend Karen’s Gradient Jigsaw Puzzle?

Let’s talk about how this puzzle broke my brain.

I started out trying to assemble the mini puzzles because I liked the idea of the building around the negative space where the mini puzzles fit. There were abrupt color transitions which made piecing the edges of the mini puzzles a challenge. So, I set those aside and moved on to the frame.

I then met up with a bunch of grey puzzle pieces. If you look at the image below you’ll see it’s not a TON of grey, but any solid grey in this otherwise vibrant puzzle was such a downer for me. I put those aside and moved on to the bottom edge.

Now, here is where I admit I’m terrible with puzzles that have a lot of straight lines. You’d think it would be easy to follow those lines and just pop the pieces right in.. bam bam bam! But no. The background lines were the final straw. Instead of going solo I called on my BFF and moved this puzzle to our weekly Puzzle Day.

As expected, once I had the distraction of our weekly chat sesh and some coffee, I wasn’t as stressed out about completing the puzzle and while we didn’t exactly breeze through it, we finished it just a couple of hours.

Would I recommend this puzzle? Definitely for the novelty of the mini puzzles fitting into the main puzzle. I love how manufacturers and creators are expanding the scope of jigsaw puzzles and making them something more.

If you’re interested in puzzles that are more than just a jigsaw, please check out my review of The Magic Puzzle Company puzzle The Secret Soup.

You can check out my review of Ravensburger puzzles here.

Ravensburger has several puzzles designed in coordination with Karen: There’s Colors on Colors a 1000 piece puzzle and Puzzles on Puzzles which has 3000 pieces. Both are mind-bending and promise to be a challenge! You can find these and more puzzles by Ravensburger on Amazon by clicking below.

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