Mayhem in the Library is a super 1,000 piece jigsaw that includes 101 hidden book titles. Having solved the other two puzz-ames in the series (Day at the Festival and Night at the Movies), I was ready to get my head into a book……based puzzle!

Solving the puzzle is good old jigsawing fun. the pieces are thick, glossy, and unusually shaped which we really liked. To me, puzzles are always more fun when you have odd shaped pieces. I can’t explain why, they just seem that way! And eliminating plastic on the outside of the box, as well as inside, gets two thumbs up from me and my gaming group.

The picture is cool too. Watching the craziness unfold amidst the shelves and stacks of books is fun, and definitely nothing like my local library! The palette is quite understated – lots of oranges, reds, yellows, and browns, but that feels quite relaxing. Like curling up with your favourite book….and good thing too as the hard work is about to begin!

Once you have solved the picture and marvelled at all the details you can see, you then have to piece together 101 book titles from the characters and events going on in the library! Some are quite straightforward – the guy playing basketball in the field was an easy spot as Catcher in the Rye – but others will have you chewing your bookmark for days! We were stumped on a few for some time. But luckily there’s a solution and a copy of the complete picture in black and white identifying all the individual riddle images if you really need a helping hand too.

Jigsaws that have an extra layer of puzzliness are real hits in our house. Again, like the others in the series, they’re designed for an older crowd that our 8 year old, but he is a fiend at the piecing together stage. Plus, the way his fresh mind and imagination works, he was able to “see” things that us older puzzlers missed or disregarded. As such and as a family, we had a great time solving this together.

Plus it’s a great slow burn. We couldn’t solve all the riddles in one session. But were able to dip in and out of it whenever one or more of us had a few moments and a desire to find one more of those books! As such, it stayed on the puzzle board a lot longer than most, and I’m tempted to keep it and frame it as really is a brilliant piece of art underneath all the riddling fun!

Final Thoughts

We had a great time with this puzzle. If you love games and puzzles like we do, I’d recommend Mayhem in the Library and the others in the series. I can’t say which is my favourite as they are all slightly different. But, with a memory as bad as mine, I know I’ll happily piece and puzzle my way through it again at some point!

This blog was written by Favouritefoe

Editors note: This post was originally published on 30th May 2023. Updated on 12 July 2024 to improve the information available.