Pour over the details.
Manufacturer: New York Puzzle Company
Puzzle Type: Jigsaw Puzzle
Price: $19.95
Puzzle Overview
Coffee Break is a 500 piece jigsaw from the New York Puzzle Company’s New Yorker line. This is an entire collection of beautiful New Yorker magazine covers, not just the illustration, but the entire cover (date, price, and magazine name).
This particular puzzle is an intricate satire of complex modern coffee brewing trends illustrated by Christoph Niemann and originally published on November 16, 2015.
Materials & pieces
New York Puzzle Company puzzle pieces are a thick, durable cardboard. The pieces interlock well. For the most part, it’s clear when pieces do and do not go together.
Additionally, the cardboard is 100% recycled and the inks are soy-based.
The pieces themselves are fairly irregular, making this a less predictable puzzle to assemble.
Why this puzzle?
Having recently watched the Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design, I was pretty enthralled with Niemann’s episode (S1E1).
I loved the idea of having to puzzle through an almost entirely black and white jigsaw puzzle.
Should I buy the New York Puzzle Company’s Coffee Break?
Niemann’s Coffee Break illustration is incredibly intricate. Jigsaw puzzling through this image was both a beautiful and challenging experience.
Piecing this image together required me to visually interrogate every little intricacy of the illustration. By the time I was finished, I had gotten to know every reference and joke in the image.
It was challenging and occasionally frustrating because it’s essentially a black and white puzzle loaded with false leads and rapidly changing patterns. As soon as I had a handle on one section of the puzzle, it was finished… and suddenly there was a new section to learn. As a result, this took me about double the time that a 500-piece puzzle usually requires.
In the end, Coffee Break was a fun, yet fair challenge. It’s a wonderful illustration to spend some time exploring.
