Texas A&M Puzzle from Dowdle Folk Art

"Texas A&M," Dowdle Folk Art, 500 pieces, 16 x 20 inches

I have seen Dowdle Folk Art puzzles around for a long time, but this was my first experience in solving one of them. I am a longtime admirer of Texas A&M University, especially of what it stands for and the approach it takes to educating our young people (my granddaughter, in fact, is a sophomore at the school right now so I know it quite well), so this one was a natural choice for me. At first glance, the puzzle looks quite difficult, especially those large sections of football fans inside the stadium, but I was surprised at how quickly it all came together.

As usual, I started by building the frame of the puzzle first in order to see how much space I would be dealing with, and to help me decide how to approach the rest of the puzzle.  That's when I first spotted the "missing piece" on the left vertical, just above the A&M logo. I found this puzzle (it's from 1999) in a Goodwill Store, so I was not particularly surprised to find a missing piece right off the bat.

With a few exceptions, all the separated pieces look very much alike because of the artist's heavy use of the school's basic maroon-color-scheme. So I began with the biggest school logo and the few bluish pieces in the puzzle. After that I decided to start putting together stadium signs and the pattern at the forefront of the puzzle where cheerleaders, the team mascot, the Corp, monuments, and fans are grouped together.

And you might notice here that the "missing piece" has somehow been found.  Well, it turns out that the rather large piece is very much the color of the hardwood floor in my study (which is also my puzzle room), and I suddenly noticed it in one corner of the room where it had most likely been sitting face-up for at least two days. If the piece had fallen facedown, I would have spotted it immediately, but that's the way my luck usually plays out.

Now it was time to tackle the crowd and a few remaining fill-in pieces in other areas. Let me tell you...those little people are small and they all look pretty much alike with the exception of the signs they may be carrying...small signs, at that. It was when I decided to sort the crowd pieces by shape that things really began to move fast, and all I had left to do was fill in that handful of pieces at the bottom.  

I really enjoyed putting this one together and I recommend this kind of puzzle to others out there. Dowdle makes a number of similar puzzles for different schools across the country, so take a look for the school of your choice and you may just find a puzzle representing it.

The pieces on this one are thick and the finish is a bit glossy and prone to glare, but that gloss really enhances the look of the finished puzzle when viewed in indirect light. Adjoining pieces almost always clearly fit together, but somehow this did not translate into a tight fit. I don't glue...I use blue painter's tape on the backside of the puzzles I want to keep whole. As I found this time, even the most careful flipping of this puzzle is impossible without it coming apart in large sections. Consequently, this one will be going to my granddaughter in the box this summer when she's back home so that she can build, glue, and frame it for when she returns to school in the fall.