PackThePJs love Ravensburger puzzles. When an opportunity came along to try out their 3D Big Ben puzzle, we jumped at the chance. What we didn’t realise until we opened the box is that one of the faces is a real clock! This particular puzzle has 216 pieces, and is for the recommended age range 10 – 99 
What’s in the Box
Inside the box you’ll find:
- Instructions
- The clock
- Square support frames
- Bag with all the plastic puzzle pieces, and
- a decorated base plate to stand the finished
How to build it
When you open the bag containing all the plastic pieces you’ll see that each piece is numbered on the back. Job 1 is to sort the numbers into piles of 20, so 1-20, 21-40, 41-60 etc. This takes time, but it really helps so persevere!
Find piece 1. You’ll see an arrow on the back. Following the arrow, you place piece 2. Then find piece 3 – follow the arrow on piece 2 and slot it in. Some of the pieces are hinged and need to be bent to allow the pieces to form the corners.
Once you’ve done a full loop you’ll see the arrow points upwards: this means that the next piece connects on top of the last one. Then you carry on … just follow the arrows and you’ll soon have the base of the Big Ben tower in place.
The Big Ben Clock (one real and one fake)
You’ll need an AA battery to insert into the clock. Four pieces clad the clock face (three printed clocks on three sides and a frame around the working clock). The clock then sits on top of the tower you’ve built.
When you carry on building the puzzle pieces, number-by-number, you’ll realise you’ve built a four-face clock … this, I can only assume, replaces the clock if you’d rather not use the functioning clock.
The Spire
When you reach this point you’ll be thinking that you’ve nearly finished … not quite. The hardest, trickiest part has yet to come. The spire is really fiddly. You start at the top of the spire and work downwards. Skinny fingers help at this point! The more pieces you get placed, the stronger the spire structure becomes and it gets easier. Before you know it, it’s finished.
The spire sits on top of the clock and the finishing touch is to top the building off with the provided finial.
Base
A printed base is provided to attach Big Ben to. There are four pre-punched slots that you thread plastic clips through and these are supposed to hold the base of the tower. Maybe our Big Ben isn’t perfectly square as we struggled to get our tower to click into the clips. It doesn’t really matter though as the finished structure is remarkably strong, for a puzzle!
Big Ben now sits proudly on Toby’s shelf, alongside his London buses and telephone box! He’s really pleased with it and he loves the fact that the clock works. He had hoped that it would chime on the hour though 
Disclaimer
Ravensburger know that we love their puzzles and kindly offered to send us Big Ben to try out. Our opinions are very much our own though! For more information, please visit Ravensburger’s homepage here.
