Earth – a puzzleball
The Earth is indeed a puzzleball. Not so much the static natural landscape, animals and plants but that most puzzling element of all: mankind. Thankfully, this post has nothing to do with the complicated issues facing man on planet Earth, neither the puzzling situations man is able to create for himself to complicate daily life…
The puzzleball is a 3D puzzle in the shape of a globe. On our previous trip to Australia, the box beckoned from the shelf at Socrates in Pacific Fair. Not wanting to burden my luggage any further, I set it back down after looking at it. I had some regrets at not buying the World Globe puzzleball, but forgot about it soon after. In December, we once again happened upon Socrates. To my delight, the same shelf still contained a few boxes of the World Globe, discounted no less. Obviously, this item is a real seller 
Grabbed one and started putting it together over the weekend. The puzzle consists of 540 pieces, each molded precisely from plastic. The box contains a pre-assembled North Pole and South Pole section to assist in starting and finishing the model. The curved based is used during assembly to create a surface to push pieces more easily together and doubles as a display stand once the globe has been completed.
I’m no keen puzzle builder, so I was rather pleased to discover that each puzzle piece is numbered – 1 through 540.
There is no way I’ll attempt to match pieces by their decorated side, so I opted for the McDonald‘s style assembly method: since the pieces are attached to each other numerically, it was a rather easy methodology of piecing the globe together without having to consider the outside too much. I consider it a bit of a hack. Simple, yet effective.
Simply find the next piece in sequence, then see how best it attaches to the preceding one. In some cases, a glance at the outside to match a colour or location cannot be avoided, but I’ve completed almost half of the globe in less than 2 hours.
Now moving onwards through Europe, Russia and the USA towards Africa, South America and Australia.
This is a great gift for the puzzle-loving cartographer…
