Tiger Puzzle

Assembled piece by piece, a tiger puzzle gives up its animal slowly: first the straight edges, then a patch of orange fur, an eye, a run of stripes, until the whole tiger finally looks up from the table. The pictures in this collection come from very different places, from wildlife photography and East Asian painting to watercolor splashes and glowing fantasy art, with orange and white tigers on their own, in pairs and with their cubs.

Photographs and painted wildlife

Some pictures show the tiger much as a wildlife photographer would find it. One captures a tiger bounding straight at the camera through a burst of powder snow, both front paws drawn together in midair; another frames a tiger lying along a log, chin low over its paws and amber eyes fixed on the viewer. The Photomosaic Puzzle Tiger trades one big picture for many small ones: row upon row of tiger photographs, orange and white, resting, roaring, wading through water and staring into the lens.

Painted scenes add the setting around the animal. In one, two adults watch over a pair of cubs on a rock in a sunset jungle, a red-and-blue macaw perched in the branches above; in another, a white tiger strides out of thick green foliage with a cub at each side and orange butterflies drifting around them. A tiger steps down into a stream under red maple leaves, with butterflies over the water and a moon in the sky, and another crosses a grassy mountain slope with rocky peaks and a distant coastline behind it.

Tigers from East Asian painting

East Asian painting supplies some of the most striking pictures in the range, and the tiger has been a favorite subject of its painters for centuries. In Tiger Sanctuary Puzzle: Chinese Demon, an orange tiger braced on black rock bares its teeth at a gray, whiskered dragon coiling up through the mist of a waterfall. Chinese and Japanese artists often paired the two animals, and tradition reads them as balancing forces: an old Chinese saying has clouds following the dragon and wind following the tiger. In the same spirit, one picture shows a white tiger stepping toward the viewer under pine branches, the whole scene washed in shades of sepia, and in another a lady in a flowered kimono, ornaments in her hair, sits on the back of a reclining tiger and shelters under a red-and-white parasol. Each is a tall, vertical picture, much like a hanging scroll.

Watercolor, neon and fantasy

Other puzzles treat the tiger as a starting point for color and imagination. Tiger Puzzle Art Explosion shows a tiger's head in side view, stripes washed in violet, a bright amber eye and white droplets flicked across a background of hot orange and red. In the 1000 Piece Puzzle Tiger Astral Journey, a dark tiger with stripes that glow pink and cyan crouches over a shimmering violet pool under a starry sky and a crescent moon, its green eyes lit as if from within. Puzzle Cat & Tiger Reflection plays a visual trick: a little striped kitten peers into a puddle on a tiled floor, and its reflection is a full-grown white tiger.

Elsewhere a white tiger dissolves into drips of blue and purple paint, a tiger rests a paw on a log beside a butterfly that glows like an ember, and another lifts its nose, eyes closed, toward a spray of coral roses. One design is a collage of torn banknotes, with green dollar bills standing in for the grass beneath the tiger's feet.

Tiger puzzle piece counts

The 1000-piece format is the standard across the collection, and it is the count listed in the options of most designs. The Photomosaic Puzzle Tiger raises the count to 1500, while Tiger Puzzle Art Explosion is offered as a 300-piece, 500-piece or 1000-piece puzzle, and that 300-piece edition is the smallest count listed in the collection. The picture matters as much as the count: faces, flowers and rows of photographs break into small, recognizable areas that sort quickly, while wide fields of a single tone, such as snow, a night sky or a pale background, are where a puzzle slows down.

The pastime itself goes back to the 1760s, when a London mapmaker mounted maps on wood and cut them along the borders to teach geography. The tiger suits the format well, since its stripes and strong colors give almost every piece a clue to where it belongs.

From the table to the wall

Two of the pictures can also hang on a wall without a single piece to fit. Our tiger canvas collection prints the kitten and its tiger reflection across five panels, and the neon tiger of the Astral Journey on a single canvas, alongside tiger paintings in many other styles, from watercolor and street art to Japanese designs and white tigers with blue eyes.

Drawing the tiger after building it

Fitting a tiger together piece by piece is a close lesson in how its face is built: the white patches above the eyes, the dark lines fanning across the cheeks, the pale ruff along the jaw. No two tigers carry the same pattern of stripes, much as no two people share a fingerprint. Our step-by-step guide on how to draw a tiger face puts the same knowledge on paper, starting from a single circle and the furry ruff around the cheeks, then adding the ears, the eyes and the nose, and finishing with the stripes.

More tigers beyond the jigsaw

The puzzles are one part of our tiger toy collection. A tiger figurine offers a tiger to hold rather than assemble, from palm-sized cubs and roaring adults to a white tiger family and a saber-toothed cat, and the tiger plush range adds soft tigers to cuddle, from a large white tiger to kawaii cubs and hand puppets.

Puzzle questions, answered

Which puzzle has the highest piece count?

Among the counts listed, the Photomosaic Puzzle Tiger, with 1500. Every small photograph in its grid works as a puzzle within the puzzle, which makes it a long and varied build.

Which pictures show white tigers?

Several do, starting with the reflection in the kitten's puddle. White tigers also appear in sepia under the pines, in drips of blue and purple watercolor, walking with two cubs through the jungle, and resting a blue-eyed head in dry golden grass.

Are the pictures horizontal or vertical?

Both. Most are wide, horizontal scenes, while the East Asian designs, the white tiger with its cubs, the tiger under the maple leaves and the tiger with the roses come as tall, vertical pictures.