Publisher: Re-Marks, Inc.
Time Taken: 3 h 6 minutes
Number of Pieces: 500
I got some puzzles off Amazon. I decided to do the one on the right first. It’s my first puzzle from Re-Marks, and I’m loving it. The image is endearing, the print is good quality, there is minimal dust, and the pieces have clean edges. It was also my first time working with irregularly shaped pieces, but the image sections and details are distinct enough that there’s virtually no risk of false fits. There’s a medium-sized folded insert of the image enclosed in the box for reference.
The theme of the puzzle is the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit. It’s an illustrated snapshot of exactly what you expect a lagomorph enthusiast’s living space to look like, featuring an assortment of various objects liberally adorned with rabbits. Bunnies everywhere! Now that’s my kind of puzzle. I find it so relatable because, like in the puzzle, I own so many things with rabbits printed on them, it would probably be easier to list down things I own that don’t have rabbits on them than the ones that do. Sometimes I wonder if the electricians and handymen who come into my room to fix things judge me for it 🙂
Here are some pictures of the finished product and some close-ups:
It was interesting to see that my Mr Hops apparently modelled for the cover of this edition of the Rabbits magazine.
You can’t tell me that’s not a spitting image of him. Plus, that look on the jigsaw bunny’s face is exactly the same face Mr Hops makes when I tell him the store is out of his favourite treats. (He’s collapsed from hunger in the picture. Poor boy hadn’t eaten anything for all of ten minutes.)
Here’s a close-up of one of the pieces. The bold outlines and stippled appearance are giving Roy Lichtenstein.
This is what it looked like at the half-hour mark:
This is after two hours:
After completing the puzzle, I snapped a few photos and then disassembled and packed it back in the box, because halfway through it felt like I was rushing to complete it rather than savour the process, and I wanted to have another go at it on a better day.
Fast forward to exactly one week after the first completed attempt. I got a Coffee Bean iced latte after work, sat down in the study, and got to business. I ended up doing the puzzle 1.25 times during this second attempt.
How does one do a puzzle 1.25 times in one sitting, you ask? Well, after I successfully completed the puzzle, I stood up, admired it, and put some finishing touches to prepare it for framing. I patted down the puzzle and then pushed the opposing sides and corners in toward the centre to lock in the pieces. I guess I underestimated how tenuously the pieces were fitted, and the puzzle imploded before I had a chance to blink.
Both the left and right edges of the puzzle remained intact, but the entire middle column from top to bottom disintegrated and scattered pieces everywhere, inches away from their original position and on the floor and under furnitures. So, I got on the floor, picked up the pieces, and did a reconstruction speed-run of the missing section. To my horror, there were at least 10 pieces still missing when I was done, which took another 5 minutes to hunt down. Also, when I transferred the puzzle to another surface to apply glue to my manila card, the bottom edge broke off again. The puzzle gods seemed to be having a little too much fun with me, but I finally managed to finally fit and glue everything together in the end.
Lastly, someone on reddit asked if I had counted the number of bunnies in the puzzle, so I decided to give it a go and counted 49 bun-buns. 49 seems so arbitrary though… Did I miss one somewhere!?
I decided to include a shot with some of my own bunny-themed things for fun. Puzzle-ception!
It took me a few years to finally buy this puzzle and finish it, but it was a real treat. My next one is the other puzzle with two rabbits floating down the river in a coconut husk!
[Update as of January 2026: I got the puzzle framed and my rabbit decided it wasn’t complete without his signature touch. Click here]