- A realism/naturalism vs primitive style Wysocki paiting.
- Sky pieces were similar to each other, making puzzle more difficult.
- Considerably more challenging than most other Wysocki puzzles.
Title: Root Beer Break at the Butterfield’s
Pieces: 1000
Artist: Charles Wysocki
Size: 27in x 20in or 68cm x 50cm
Company: Buffalo Games
Year Printed: ?
Wysocki is famous for his primitive style Americana themed paintings, such as the Prairie Wind Farm and Olde America. However, as his artistic career took off, so did his artistic styles. Wysocki shifted to a naturalism and realism style, while still incorporating an Americana theme. Root Beer Break at the Butterfield’s is one of such works with more realistic looking sea gulls and clouds with the ever present American flag.
Build
Initially, we sorted and built the puzzle pieces in the following order from easiest to the hardest: border, kites, flag, fence, grass, ocean, canoe, sand, bell, house roof covered in flowers, house’s wall, and sky with clouds. The kites were easy to sort and build, because the kites’ shapes and colors were different from all other parts of the puzzle. Next, the grass and fence got built as they were connected to the kites. Fortunately, the lower part ( bottom right) of the sand had patterns that were more recognizable than the upper sand dunes. Surprisingly, the house was fairly straight forward as the red flowers, shingles, and doors made the sorting easy. Lastly, the clouds were the hardest because the pieces looked all the same. There was a lot of trail and error in figuring out which pieces went where.
Difficulty
Root Beer Break at the Butterfield’s is a hard puzzle. It took us a little over five hours and forty minutes (5:40:40) time to complete the puzzle. It took almost two hours to complete just the sky and cloud portion. All of us worked hard to finish the sky. We were so happy when we finished the puzzle.
I, specifically, focused on building the house. My sister built most of the sky, grass, and sand. My parents did the kites, boat, and sky. I would recommend this puzzle if you want to do something challenging and fun. This is a great puzzle to do with your family.
Finally, this puzzle is the 39th solved puzzle from our 87 puzzle collection. Leave us a comment if there are any other Charles Wysocki puzzles that you would want us to review.
Thanks for the photo of the completed puzzle. I did it by myself over three days in about the same order of progression you did. It wasn’t until I started banging my head against the wall when I started working on the sky that I found your link, and used it as a cheat for the sky–I’m not an enthusiast for breaking my brain on difficult sameness pieces.
The one problem I had until the night before I finished it was that there were enough false fits in the top left and right sky edges that I could not for the life of me get them together and thought there must be something missing. It finally came together though–I wasn’t able to get some of the pieces next to the edge in until I got that sorted.
This was my 190th puzzle since March 20, 2020.