Ravensburger The Earth - 540 Piece Puzzleball

great puzzle
I'm not a big fan of jigsaw puzzles (sure, they are fun, but I can think of more fun things to do with my time), but when I saw this thing in its assembled form at barnes and noble, something about it made me do a double take. It just looked so cool and unusual -- a professional-looking globe made out of jigsaw pieces with no internal support! How can it be so smooth? How can it stay solid? I hadn't even noticed that it wasn't a solid globe at first, when casually catching it out of the corner of my eye a few times as I was browsing the book stalls. It seemed like a lot of fun to make something like this, as was the prospect of testing my geography. My wife didn't see it as all *that* cool, but we still had a blast assembling this thing, though she only did the US, canada, and antarctica and only had patience for 30-60 minutes at a time. Trying to figure out which part of the world a given piece belonged to based only on parts of city names was a lot of fun. Watching it grow was...
Excellent product!!
My 9-year old daughter and I have had a wonderful experience with this puzzle. She started out using the numbers on the back of the pieces, but I convinced her to use her regular puzzle skills to assemble the globe. We've both learned a thing or two about geography! I chose the Ravensburger brand because of its quality and durability; I wasn't disappointed. I definitely recommend this product to others.
Great puzzle; several flaws
This was an extremely fun puzzle. I stayed up late at night working on it. If you don't "cheat" by using the numbers on the backs of the pieces, it is an excellent way to learn and review geography. The pieces have a great, smooth feel to them. They feel solid and seem to be waterproof (plastic or plastic-coated). My wife and I had a great deal of fun with the puzzle and would recommend it for most ages down to about age 8, depending on a child's interest in learning and an adult's ability to teach and to interest children in learning. It might be a bit tedious for kids too young or too impatient.

The puzzle is fairly solid and rigid when completed (thanks, probably, to my use of tape on the inside). It spins well in the metal stand. I disagree with the reviewers who faulted the stand--it was easy to use and did not require distorting the puzzle. I also disagree with those who wrote that it cannot be constructed in sections. That's exactly how I did it...
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