pumpkinstrokemarrow

The second go at a 'JR JIGSAWS 500', the first being on June 11th. My comments on that occasion stand up well to this second occasion.

I would only add that, while all interior pieces are of prong-hole-prong-hole configuration - something which seems to be unique to this particular brand - there are lots of interior vertices which are not the meeting place of four pieces. Plus, solution is simplified by whole segments (a line of pieces, either horizontal or vertical) having alternating up and down prongs, which together with pieces having strong horizontal or vertical pattern means that one knows the orientation of any piece in the segment, thus substantially reducing the number of combinations to be checked.

Started with the top half of the edge then became absolutely sure than one of the middle right hand side edge pieces was missing, a thought reinforced by this being one of the few jigsaws in which the pieces had not been nicely bagged up for sale. Got a bit grumpy: should I abandon ship? Calmed down and pressed on, but for some reason decided to get on with the masts before doing the bottom half of the edge.

Then the white house, then the windows, then the trees. Then the piece which I was so sure was missing turned up. I had been confused by expecting a largely white piece, which was not what this piece turned out to be. The sort of error which, as it happens, quite often accounts for failure to find a piece.

Gradually worked down the image, operating on a broad front. The red hull was surprisingly easy, after which I tackled the bottom half of the edge, which also turned out to be quite easy. This now left two islands of sky to complete and one larger island of sea. Sky easy as there were no interior pieces - every piece still to do abutted one which had been done. Sea even easier as it was a single row, this despite two errors turning up at this point, each error being reasonably easy to fix, being the switching of two nearby pairs, one on the bottom edge and one on the bottom of the red hull.

Good sense of achievement on completion; clearly refreshed by the change of solution strategy.

There was also some interest in the way in which some pieces were found and placed. On several occasions I would be looking for piece A, scanning the loose pieces. Then without there being any conscious intervention, the brain spotted some quite different piece B, knew where to put it and sent appropriate instructions to the hand. On each such occasion the brain got it right - without there being any conscious thought about it at all. Such conscious thought and control as there was was about piece A. So it seems that there is plenty going on in the background which one is not aware of at all. Could it all get out control? Maybe being in control at all is all a bit of an illusion.

Celebrated with the first cow chop of the bag era. An extra mature chop from Manor Green Road, lying between the fore rib and sirloin sections of the cow. Cooked the 3lbs 6oz for an hour and twenty minutes, preheating the over to 180C, and then rested for 15 minutes. Oven door opened once at the start of resting to remove some fat to participate in the cooking of the mushrooms and to baste. BH thought the meat was spot on, I thought it a touch overcooked, a reaction to the recent underdone pork. Furthermore, not convinced about this extra mature business. Not sure that I don't prefer fresh. Certainly, in the past, I have not been impressed by the extra mature from Sainsbury's. Mushrooms lightly cooked in a mixture of fat and water. Served with boiled white rice and boiled summer cabbage. In the round, not bad at all. We will see how it does cold tomorrow.

PS: Chrome sickness is getting worse. Unable to post an illustration of this puzzle. Reduced to Internet Explorer to get it in. Which took a bit of fiddling around even there. What is going on?