32,256 Piece Puzzle Project!

The Keith Haring: Double Retrospect puzzle by Ravensburger Puzzles is 32,256 pieces. Fully built it measures 17.8’ long x 6’ high. When the puzzle was released in 2011, it held the Guiness World Book record for largest jigsaw puzzle ever made. So large, in fact, it comes with its own dolly to transport the box!

When the puzzle was donated to the society we couldn’t wait to put it together! On March 2nd, 2025 we dove in and started sorting!

On March 20th we completed the first square! We were aided by the fact that the people who donated the puzzle to the society had put together the first bag of 4,000 pieces before donating. When they decided to take it apart they separated the first 4 squares into 4 bags. This made our job easier!

Simultaneously building a couple squares from the first original bag allowed us complete the next square on March 30th. We’re beginning to find the tricks to piecing together this difficult puzzle. The design colors are all monotone - so no shading to offer clues!

The last 2 squares from the first section were completed on April 1st and 17th, respectively. The white sections are the most difficult and required multiple attempts until we finally had them correct. Now it is on to the next bag of pieces!

Once we pieced the first section that was given to us in bags of 1,000 pcs/bag, we now have the rest of the puzzle which is in bags of 4,000 pieces and includes 4 squares. This requires a huge amount of sorting! Many of the colors are used in all four squares, making it impossible to know in which square it belongs. Some days it feels like all we do is stare at red/green/blue and not get one piece that fits!!

May 12th: It has taken us a full month to get this point with the bag of 4,000 pieces. It is very difficult to work on all four squares at the same time. This square is the farthest along. But now we have the black borders together for all four squares and we hope this makes finding pieces a little easier!