The BCD

Martin and Frances were our hosts on a return visit to Normandy, Surrey. It was good to welcome some first-time visitors among the old friends – they were all surprised by the huge variety of puzzles on display.

The unusual theme of Light and Dark attracted 12 contributors and 26 puzzles, including this striking black and white puzzle, Paresse, cut by Martin Norgate.

There was a birthday celebration for another great cutter, Andrew Kershaw, who is no longer able to attend meetings. We sang Happy Birthday to him, signed a card covered in photos of puzzles he has cut, and thought of him as we enjoyed the home-made cake provided…

This was our last meeting of the year, so we look forward now to a virtual weekend in January  from the comfort of our own homes, and the annual knees-up in February, in Coventry.

Seasons’ greetings to all our members!

Issue 150 already! And in it, we celebrated Frances, our 1,000th member!! John Hyde paid a heartfelt tribute to this ‘friendly and worthwhile organisation’.

There were two quarterly meetings, one in Shalford and the other virtual, with very different themes – Wild cards (taken very literally by some) and Summer and autumn.

Some of our Facebook group members bemoaned The one that got away, in the hope that a reader would have the puzzle they wanted, and be prepared to part with it. Bronwen made a spirited defence of flickr. Maria continued her Mapping the world series with a map puzzle that had parts of the world in the wrong place…

Jackie asked for information about a British cutter, the mysterious JT according to his/her signature piece. American puzzle expert Anne Williams contributed a fascinating article about the links between American Falls puzzles, the British Royal family, and Liberty puzzles. Kerstin’s interest was in two Swiss women puzzle cutters. David Mullett, aka Bungalow Bill, answered the editor’s questions about his puzzles.

The co-founder of the fairly new British cardboard puzzle company, Cloudberries, explained the puzzles’ appeal and offered readers an incentive to try them. Cicely gave us a delightful account of the charity shop puzzle which brought back memories of her early life in Southend.

David explained how our invaluable resource, The Jigasaurus, had been updated, and reminded us how best to search this huge puzzle archive. The final reminder was about the annual house party – book now, to avoid disappointment!

The quarterly meeting at Rushmere St. Andrew was rather special. Our host was Trish Tyler, one of our founder members, and her generous welcome included a ploughman’s lunch followed by blackberry and apple crumble.

Show and Tell puzzles on the theme of ‘Life on the farm’ included this whimsical puzzle club jigsaw ‘Bank Holiday on the farm’ by artist Molly Brett.

Sales were rather slow – we were all busy chatting, puzzling and eating cake (yes, we still had room for the home-made cakes on offer).

Speed puzzler Emma managed to complete the tricky plexiglass travelling starfish puzzle in two and a half hours, despite all attempts to distract her.

In the evening, many of us stayed on for a fish and chip supper in Trish’s garden. The perfect end to the day – no wonder Maria had travelled from Germany to join us!

Our next meeting will be in Normandy – Surrey, not France…

New members are always welcome, but there’s something very special about enrolling member no.

Find out more in the next magazine!!

The weekend started, as always, on flickr, with members optimistically posting photos of the puzzles they intended to complete over the weekend. Wout had chosen to do a photo which looked to be made up entirely of blue, cream and brown pieces…

The Show and Tell on Zoom provided a wide variety of types of puzzle on the theme of ‘Summer and Autumn’. New member Dee provoked a rush of puzzle envy with her astonishing riddle puzzle, Hope; the puzzle of a black bear contained pieces which made up a separate puzzle of a moose. Apparently, several of those who bought it abandoned hope of ever completing it.

On Sunday, we had an informal chat on Zoom, a highlight of which was listening to puzzle cutters talking about the devious tricks they use to confuse puzzle solvers.

Meanwhile, back on flickr, Wout had used up all his blue and cream pieces to make up –  a large expanse of sky! And Steffi posted a beautiful mystery puzzle, A house in the sun.

Our next meeting is in Ipswich in September, with a theme of ‘Life on the farm’. See you there!

This bumper issue had something for everyone. Our February house party was remembered by social secretary Julia and by new member Claire.  Geert summarised his talk about the origin of map puzzles. Heather followed up her talk about more than 20 years of puzzle cutting with a step-by-step guide to cutting a puzzle. New committee member Delia introduced herself. Bronwen sent us a ‘Wish you were here’ postcard from Criccieth.

The Show and Tell theme was ‘Favourite puzzles’ so unsurprisingly members unearthed some real treasures. Jackie gave detailed advice on how to choose an image for a hand-cut puzzle. Justin Madden of Par Puzzles in New York patiently answered members’ questions, and gave us a real insight into this 90-year old company. Nicki reviewed the A1 Puzzle Club, and Bibbi did some detective work to find out about the man behind the JLE puzzle company in Sweden.  David asked ChatGPT AI which was the oldest puzzle in the world…

Although the focus of this issue was on hand-cut puzzles, other interests weren’t completely ignored. Katherine gave us an overview of her favourite and not-so-favourite cardboard puzzle makes, and Maria showed us the largest cardboard antique world map puzzle in existence, containing 20,000 pieces. Jackie’s talk on Artifact laser-cut puzzles, and Pete’s romp through Horrible Histories in puzzles, were also briefly explained. Phew.

A hot summer’s day, and finally attendee numbers are back up to pre-pandemic levels. It was great to see some old friends again as well as some welcome fresh faces.

BCD members Craig and Amelda of Puzzly set up a beautiful stall of their laser-cut puzzles. Another highlight was John’s talk and stunning display of Pears magazines and puzzles. The theme of ‘wild card’ was taken literally by one member – he produced a puzzle of The Joker… Portraits were a bit of a theme, and included ‘Aunt’ Moira Shearer, Ellen Terry playing Imogen in ‘Cymbeline’ and a  fiendishly difficult Eric Bond puzzle of a fierce chieftain. All that and home-made cake – a great time was had by all.

Our next (virtual) meeting is only a month away!

These two talks were a real feast for the eyes, as well as being informative. Jackie Armstrong introduced us to the history of Artifact Puzzles from the USA, and showed us a ravishing display of different styles, including fancy edges, tesselations, geometric puzzles, and puzzles with a split tendril cut invented by Artifact.
Then Pete Day took us on a breakneck romp through British history, beginning with some antique puzzles showing kings and queens, and then going from Chad Valley’s The Romans at Caerleon to Peacock’s Scotland for Ever, depicting Waterloo.

These will be hard acts to follow, but if you have a puzzling interest which would make an interesting video talk, please get in touch!

This issue’s in the pink, with a colourful bouquet of spring flowers by Renoir on the cover. Winter and Spring were the themes of the January virtual meeting. Two Swedish club members talked about their puzzle collections: Per-Martin gave us a potted history of Brio Puzzel, while new member Henrik collects Victory Gold Box puzzles. Nicki’s series on puzzle clubs covered the earliest known examples – the two Original Puzzle clubs, established in Cornwall in 1908 and in London in 1909. Barbara has a large collection of Mammoth puzzles, including one showing a mystery village, but wonders why four puzzles are missing from the series. Kerstin showed us two more of her Zeitvertreib puzzles, in an article about poems and puzzles which had sparked a lively discussion in our flickr group. Martin, meanwhile, illustrated the work of an extraordinary British cutter, B B Dickinson. I feel sure he was a Mathematics don at Cambridge University! Bronwen told a tale of woe about a difficult vintage puzzle repair.

Modern puzzles weren’t overlooked. Puzzle cutter Shay, also in the pink, has a new website, where she is cataloguing her personal puzzle collection, as well as a puzzle diary of every one of her hand-cut puzzles. She also offers video guides to puzzle design and cutting, and will offer puzzles for sale in future. The new Victory laser-cut company was profiled, and Katherine reviewed Life of Puzzles, a puzzle rental club. Nicki made a surprising puzzle purchase at a rural market in South Africa. Members of our Facebook group swapped tips on how to mount cardboard puzzles for display. Alison explained how to buy job lots of puzzles at auction, while Helen reminded us of the simple pleasure of a charity shop find.

The next magazine will be an extended issue, covering the annual house party, and much more!

The Members website has been updated recently, so you can now search the content of individual BCD Magazines – with the search words highlighted in the text.

If you have not registered with the Members website yet, you are missing out on a great resource of all of our Magazines going back to Issue 1 from 1985 all the way to the latest publication.

You can find the Members website here, which includes demonstration videos on how to register and make use of the website.

As well as individual Magazines, you can also search the full text and contents lists of the entire library of issues using the spreadsheets on the Members website. There are some useful short videos and tutorials from Microsoft on sorting and filtering (i.e. searching) tables in Excel available online.

The site also includes other useful content, such as links to all of the photo galleries, discussions, slideshows, videos, news and Magazine excerpts from recent quarterly and virtual meetings.