This puzzle is the second one I've made based on K. Chin's excellent poster "We have to believe in Rainbows" (see Puzzle 25 for a full picture and ordering information for the non-customized version). For other K. Chin prints available as puzzles see: K. Chin - Prints. All things considered, this puzzle is my most elaborate production to date.

For Unicorn puzzles see: K. Chin - Prints.

Wow! What is going on here? OK, I have to come out and say it - See that "Jurassic Piece"? That's the "strip cut" piece - the squarish looking one with the two "ins" and two "outs" - the shape most people identify with puzzles - the piece just to the left of the Superman Symbol? I don't "do" strip cuts. However I must say the customer who ordered this puzzle was brilliant, he ordered one and only one of these in the puzzle - so actually this piece is a Figural and the surrounding pieces are nothing like it. When viewed with the rest of the pieces in a pile, the piece definitely looks like it is a piece from another puzzle that was mixed in by mistake!

This puzzle contains some great figurals (all of the ones shown are at the request of the customer) - there are two that the customer did not order, and I'm not showing them here, I'm sure he'll be peeking! Most of the figurals are shown upside down to keep their location a secret. The Scorpion was very "hairy" to cut and I almost lost the puzzle while cutting it, but it came out great. The bee was easier to cut. Below the Scorpion is the Enterprise from the original Star-Trek show. This piece is cut exactly to scale. I cut it six times out of a raw puzzle board before I felt comfortable enough cutting it for real - the flight deck is very thin and I've learned that straight lines are harder to cut than curved ones - no one knows if the curves I cut are planned or accidental. The various curves at the rear of the star ship are cut very close to the way the engines really are - the main impulse engines are not straight. I also cut the Superman Symbol several times to develop a clear strategy of how to cut it and subdivide it. The "S" leaves a small triangle at the bottom - and my solution for avoiding a super tiny puzzle piece was to use the triangle as the tip for the Key to the Superman's "Fortress of Solitude". I found a website that had the dimensional specs for the key and I altered my original "skeleton key" design to closely match the actual proportions and shape of the key. Also, as in Puzzle 25, the Unicorn was cut out as a single "Treat Piece" (see Puzzle 25).

There is some line cutting in the puzzle - I was requested to do 50% line cutting around the animals - so some animals are completely cut out, some partially cut out and some not at all! The Tiger is made up of nine pieces and the other animal, five.

Oh, about the cutting style - the sky section is done in Swirl Curl and the ground section, including the animals and most vegetation are done in the Long Round style - also per customer request. Look at the pieces at the lower right of the picture - the bottom two are Long Rounds, the one above the two is a transistional piece, and other two are Swirl Curls. In the lower left are some "Concept Pieces". I added these within the Swirl Curl section, also there are a few not shown. If I tried to make all pieces Concept Pieces, the pieces in between the good Concept Pieces might suffer - but adding a few to the puzzle made the overall presentation more interesting. Puzzle #25, cut in Swirl Curl style, featured my very first "Open Curl" piece. The "Open Curl" piece made its debut in the Rainbow - and likewise, these Concept Pieces are making their debut in around the rainbow.

I also placed some trick edges in the puzzle, again per customer request. In the picture, there appears to be two edges, but which one is real? I did some learning about this strategy while cutting the puzzle, I'm grateful for this order! I still have some learning to do about trick corners, I didn't really deliver here - as a consolation, one of the corners is this puzzle is hard to find.

The "F" and the "P" pieces are the customer's initials, per request. I had to manually thicken the serifs to create stronger puzzle pieces. I think my choice of type face looks better than the blocky letters I sometimes see in Pastime puzzles.

Significant milestones

• Most number of pieces so far: 553
• First hybrid puzzle - ground section is Long Round, sky section is Swirl Curl
• First placement of "trick edges" in the puzzle
• First repeated use of an image in a sold puzzle
• Most figurals and most complex figurals.