In the window of a local charity shop I spotted another mystery puzzle. This one was “University Games Map Mysteries Mystery Jigsaw Puzzle Egypt”. The box announced that once you had completed the 1000 piece puzzle you would have to solve the clues in the border to uncover a mystery in Egypt.
So far, so good. This sounded like the Exit Puzzle Mystery Jigsaw we’d just completed, so I queued up (it was the day before another Lockdown) and bought it in time for some quarantine fun.
On opening the box we discovered there was a magnifying glass missing. There was no picture of the puzzle inside the box, so we had to assume the photo on the box was what we were building. We assembled it using the photo, as best we could as some of it was obscured. And boy, was the writing on the map tiny. Probably why we should have had a magnifying glass.
The puzzle pieces were all regular shape, so no looking for an odd shaped piece to fill an odd shaped hole. Also some pieces could be put in more than one place and you only found out you were wrong when you got to a bit that didn’t link up. I’ll admit I found it frustrating.
Anyway, we ploughed on and got most of it completed. One edge contained a message and a key code. Another contained instructions to be decoded.
So we decoded the message and followed the instructions. There was no “aha!” moment. In fact the ending was an anticlimax. Had we found the right place? We didn’t know. There was nothing in the box to confirm or deny our victory.
After a lot of searching online we found a solution page……..which gave the translation of the encrypted message, but still didn’t give a definitive answer.
I wouldn’t say this had been a fun way to spend a few hours. More like a frustrating way to pass the time.
Map Mysteries Jigsaw Puzzle Egypt is currently unavailable on Amazon, although you may be lucky (?) enough to find one in a charity shop. Hopefully one with everything included!
If you want to try a different Map Mysteries Jigsaw Puzzle, the Fountain Of Youth Jigsaw is available from Amazon.