Explicitly Yours remains covid19 free and open for business.   

During the pandemic, we've done a lot of puzzles.  Having not done puzzles before the pandemic, we started at the beginning with very easy puzzles and found manufacturers that were far superior to others based on the quality of the material and the preciseness of cuts of the pieces.  We then quickly improved our skill level.  I want to give a shout out to my two favorite puzzle manufacturers Hartmaze and Nautilus Puzzles are heirloom quality puzzles that can be purchased online from either their websites or the really big one that will go unnamed here.  They produce thick wood puzzles with interconnecting pieces using laser cutting technology to make the pieces uniquely shaped. 

Tip:  puzzles that do not have borders, text or numbers will give you a better workout.  And order directly from the Nautilus Puzzles website because they have a very loyal following and puzzles sell out extremely quickly.

The puzzles got me thinking about the value of website reviews.  For 18 years customer reviews were not posted. We always did our best and got orders out extremely fast.  It inherently seems that personalized pencils are too unique to each customer.  Customers purchase different fonts with different pencil & print combinations and different text.  Some customers have a fabulous sense of colors and others, like myself, do not.

Shopping online has evolved over the past 19 years and so now reviews are posted, I LOVE the 5 star reviews posted on the website.  But I still want customers to take them with a grain of salt because what you are ordering is not what the other customer ordered.  We will do our absolute best with each order and get every order shipped extremely quickly, but the results will depend on your font, text, punctuation, pencil & print color combination.

So how does this relate to puzzles?  Here is an example:  I love difficult puzzles and so I feel I've wasted my money on puzzles that do not adequately challenge me.  But the level of difficulty that challenges me may not be the level of challenge that appeals to someone else.  So long as a puzzle arrives with all of the pieces, with pieces that clearly fit together, and it arrives in a reasonable time, do I really have a right to give less than a 5 star review?  Is it fair to a website or manufacturer if I give less than a 5 star review just because a particular puzzle was too easy?  

I think the lesson is that products, whether pencils or puzzles, are very thoughtful and perfect gifts for some people at the right time in their lives, when ordered with attention to detail in light of the particular needs of that specific customer.