While we were cruising across to Copenhagen, Gill asked if
there were any puzzle shops in Copenhagen, and once I'd got over the initial
shock (only kidding dear!) I hit Google and discovered a place called Games
that looked like it might have some interesting looking puzzles in it...
Once we'd found our way into the city centre and done some
of the touristy sight-seeing stuff, we wandered down the main shopping drag and
came across Jorck's Passage and duly found Games ... which it turns out has a
pretty decent array of great puzzles. In one display there was a set of Sonic
Warp (or whatever they call themselves at the moment!) puzzles including Isis,
Ramisis and Coppernisis. There were
several displays of cast puzzles of varying descriptions, entanglement puzzles
by the dozen and shelves full of Thinkfun puzzles and games.
Around the back of the shop I found a veritable treasure
trove of wooden puzzles in large glass display cabinet ... I recognised tons of
Vinco's along the top two shelves and saw quite a few puzzles that I didn't
recognise... including an interesting cube dissection where the pieces also fit
into a rectangular box that I
immediately decided I needed to add to the collection... it'll turn up
in a blog post one of these days, promise!
I also picked up a travel-sized Katamino puzzle that has
already provided more than its fair share of puzzling trying to fit various
combinations of pentominoes into different sized rectangles in the playing
area.
We didn't try and find any puzzle shops in Stockholm but
while we were wandering around Gamla Stan we had a look in a little shop that
was run by a group of craftsmen who took turns in manning the shop that sells
their handiwork. One of the craftsmen is a woodworker called Carl Nelson who
happened to produce one or two puzzles, so I picked up a copy of his 11-piece
furniture puzzle - simple and cute!
Before getting into Helsinki I hit up Google for some puzzle
shops and I found one interesting candidate called Heureka in the shopping mall
at the Kamppi station. Thanks to Gill's superior map-reading skills we managed
to find it and I was amazed to see not only a full display stand of Cast
Puzzles but shelves full of JC Constantin puzzles ... including several that I
didn't already have, so I helped myself to a copy of Blumen Orange and Surface
along with an intricate-looking double sided ball bearing maze whose name
escapes me...
On the wall next to the cashier there were rows and rows of puzzles
that looked like Tomas Linden's work and indeed on examining the packaging they
were all Tomas' work branded for Heureka - so I picked up a copy of his Comet
disentanglement puzzle... Oh and a set of optical illusion cards that were
going for a song...
A few days later in Tallinn's old town I discovered a cute
little puzzle box along a well-known principle - not a difficult puzzle - not
even particularly good-looking, but it'll remind me of my visit to Tallinn ...
Having left on a cruise with the intention of just having a
holiday, somehow some new puzzles managed to hunt me down and sneak into the
collection ... now that's a great holiday!
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