legends · 4 min read ·
1,000 Pieces
A jigsaw puzzle of a street goes dark window by window, in the order the real street does.
**Product:** Heritage Puzzles — "A Street in Autumn" (1,000 pieces, 68 × 49 cm)
**Average rating:** 4.2 (87 reviews)
*A quiet terrace in late afternoon light. Brick houses, a cobbled road, fallen leaves. Every window lit.*
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**★★★★★ "Beautiful"** · *Mrs. K. Hale*
Lovely colours, thick cardboard, pieces fit perfectly. Took me three evenings. Would recommend.
**★★★★☆ "Good but one piece missing"** · *Dev P.*
Lovely picture. One piece missing from the upper right. Disappointing.
**★★★★★ "Absorbing"** · *Janet W.*
It took me a week and I never wanted it to end. The windows are all lit and each has a figure behind the curtain. You can see them if you look.
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**★★☆☆☆ "Something's off"** · *Tom R.*
I've done the puzzle twice. Both times the picture is the same, but I am sure the lit windows are different. The first time, the third house from the left had a lamp on in the top window. The second time, it was the downstairs one. I'd swear on it.
**Seller response:** *Thank you for your feedback. Our puzzles are printed to the same specification. The image does not change between boxes.*
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**★★★☆☆ "The street looks familiar"** · *Anon*
I keep getting the feeling I've lived here. There's a red door at the far end. I live in a street with a red door at the end. The houses are on the left. The lamp post is on the right. It is my street, I think, or something very like it, and I can't decide which is odd.
**★★★★★ "A perfect copy of my road"** · *Mr. S. Okafor*
I assembled the puzzle and set it on the table. Then I walked outside and stood at the bottom of my own road and looked at the houses. Same bricks. Same gutters. Same bay windows. This is my road, to the life. The only thing different is the light in the windows. In the picture, they are all lit. In my road they are all dark.
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**Buyer's update (Mr. S. Okafor, 21 October)**
I should have said more. The puzzle shows my road, as I say. But last night I looked at it again, and the picture had changed. The lit windows had gone out, one by one, in the houses along my side. All the windows of number 4, number 6, number 8. There is still light in number 2 and number 12.
I live at number 10.
I rang the neighbours at 4 and 6 and 8. None of them answered. I walked down the road in the evening and they were all in. I could see them through the windows, in their living rooms. The lamps were off, and the televisions off, and they sat in the dark, each one in a chair, looking straight ahead.
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**Buyer's update (Mr. S. Okafor, 24 October)**
I have been looking at the puzzle. It is on the table in the dining room. I have counted the windows, the ones that are lit. They are fewer. Eleven now, from thirty-eight. The road is going dark in the picture, house by house. In reality too: I have seen the lights go out, in the real windows, at six in the evening, in the order they go out in the puzzle.
The figures behind the curtains are clearer. I see now that they are not looking at the street. They are looking out of the puzzle. They are looking at the person who put it together.
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**Buyer's update (Mr. S. Okafor, 28 October)**
One lit window is left. Number 10, upper floor, the room with the bay. There is a light in it, and a figure in the curtain. It is a man, my height, my build. His face is turned to the glass. He is looking out at the street.
There is one piece missing from the puzzle. It is at the upper right. A small blue-grey piece of sky. The seller says it was never in the box. I cannot find it anywhere. I have turned the room upside down.
I have just looked at the picture again. The street is dark from end to end. The figure in the window is gone. The light has gone with it. The last piece of the picture that is lit is the gap itself, in the upper right, where the piece should be, and through it, very faintly, I can see the pattern of the wood of my table, and the shape of a hand reaching down to put it in.