Anyone want to take a guess at why this is clearly a pre-WWII puzzle?
Hint: click to enlarge, or right-click and open image in a new window for the largest view.
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Making small thing grand and grand things small.
Erin O'Brien
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22 comments:
Embiggening the puzzle was of no assistance in me wagering a guess, so I'll wild guess it's pre-WWII puzzle because of the crackling.
Is there a map in there somewhere?
MR
Is it a hand cut puzzle?
No map, and the condition has nothing to do with it. The puzzle is cardboard and I'm pretty sure it was stamped.
Oh what a delicious joy that no one has gotten it yet!
Wait one second ... embiggening?
I'm no puzzle enthusiast, but the one real distinction I can see is the lack of 'toggling' for want of a better word -- there are little extrusions with round tips in puzzle pieces that make them interlock firmly when assembled, so the puzzle is structurally sound. That puzzle looks as if any little knock on the table would put it into disarray.
Just a guess.
The lettering on the box is gorgeous, by the way. As I've said before, whatever happened to style?
Sean, you are right. Although the box asserts "interlocking," many of the pieces are "push puzzle" style and the tiniest nudge is like an earthquake with this puzzle.
It's one of the things that make it at once maddening and charming.
People, you cannot know how tickled I am to have stumped you for this long!
Dear Lord, I don't ask for much. Please let this sweet joy last--if only for a few more hours.
The other thing that dates this puzzle is that there is no image on the box. So you not only had the fun of doing the puzzle, there was the mystery of discovering what it depicted.
Embiggen:
A perfectly cromulent word.
To make bigger, to make larger, to make size increase
I kinda like the word embiggen, and not just because it's cromulent.
There is a swastika as one of the pieces.
Al
TRAG
Following Al here...
Are the women German or Polish Jews? Was it made in an Axis country?
RJ
GRRRR, Al! You're embiggening me!
Here's a solution photo.
It's amazing to think how a figure that was once so innocuous it was often used as a whimsy piece in a Five & Dime puzzle transformed into a universal symbol of evil.
Am I allowed to suggest that embiggening is cromulent?
And, Ahahahahaha! Right again. I worked for that one.
The posts you've previously done on jigsaw puzzles had me ready to roll on this one, actually. I love the aesthetic details of forms in which I'm not involved.
So did Hitler do a jigsaw?
It's amazing to think how a figure that was once so innocuous it was often used as a whimsy piece in a Five & Dime puzzle transformed into a universal symbol of evil.
As an interesting aside, I've a 9 volume set of Kipling's works, published by Doubleday & Co. in 1914, and each volume, just prior to the title page, has Kipling's name printed in a circle and immediately underneath Kipling's name is the swastika.
If you put up another such puzzling riddle, I'm gonna follow the hints Sean has alluded to.
There is a Hindu character(Sanskrit?) that looks like the swastika that pre-dates Nazism by a couple thousand years.
RJ
rj, you are correct. the nazis just rotated it 45 degrees, so it looks like it's reversed. it's an affirmation of life, meaning, among other things, "life is good!"
http://www.sanskrit.org/www/Hindu%20Primer/swastika.html
I love this puzzler. How fun!
I believe the swastika was also a symbol of certain native American peoples.
"Embiggen" has had several usages on the Simpsons. But I had forgotten the "cromulent" set-up-When that episode (cromulent) aired I nearly spit out my tonsils laughing...
MR
From the box:
The Ullman Mfg. Co. N.Y.
Made in U.S.A
And your humble hostess apologizes for her lack of skill in the photography department. One day I shall remedy that.
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