🎃 Halloween Black Witch 300 Piece Jigsaw Puzzles – Part 1
Tonight we’re taking a slightly different approach to Halloween horror with a spooky 300-piece Black Witch jigsaw puzzle! Join me for a relaxed evening of puzzling, chatting, and attempting to work out where all those suspiciously similar pieces belong.
Three hundred pieces. One witch. And absolutely no guarantee that I won’t spend twenty minutes looking for a corner piece that’s already on the table.
We’re continuing our HallowStream week with something a little more peaceful than our usual Halloween games. At least, that was the plan. I thought we could comfortably finish this little puzzle in one evening, but as you’ll discover, things didn’t quite work out that way!
🧩 About the Game
For this Jigsaw Puzzle Night, we’re putting together a physical 300-piece Halloween puzzle featuring a witch and her black cat wandering through an autumn woodland. There are glowing orange leaves, pumpkins, and a lovely silhouette of the witch against the colourful background.
There’s also a rather cute message across the picture: “Once upon a time, there was a girl who really loved cats and Halloween. It was me, the end.”
The idea is simple enough. We sort through the pieces, find the edges, gradually assemble the picture and enjoy some conversation along the way. No timers or pressure, just a relaxing evening together and hopefully the satisfaction of placing that final piece.
🍂 Where We Are in the Journey
It’s been absolutely ages since our last jigsaw puzzle stream, possibly over a year. We originally used to do these on Sunday evenings, but those sessions gradually became our regular movie nights. I’ve also become rather fond of having a peaceful Sunday evening watching a film instead of streaming!
We’ve tackled quite a few puzzles over the years, including that particularly troublesome Skyrim puzzle which took us months to finish. Compared with that, a little 300-piece Halloween puzzle seemed perfectly manageable.
This is Part 1 of our Black Witch puzzle, starting with a freshly sealed box and the intention of completing the whole picture during our HallowStream celebrations. Whether 300 pieces would cooperate with that plan was another matter entirely.
🧙 What Happens in This Episode
We started the evening in the usual way for our jigsaw puzzle streams, by opening the box live. I hadn’t unsealed it beforehand, so this was our first proper look at the pieces. Once I’d remembered to unmute my microphone and sorted out the microphone arm, which seemed determined to get in my way, we could finally get started.
The puzzle came with a little poster showing the finished picture, which was quite handy. However, I immediately noticed something slightly concerning about the pieces. They didn’t seem to interlock particularly well, and some looked as though they would simply slide together. That wasn’t particularly reassuring when we were planning to assemble the whole thing on camera! But thankfully I was incorrect and this puzzle from Artinhand is one of the best fitting puzzle I have ever made, and you can get this puzzle here.
Then I realised I’d forgotten to get my puzzle sorting boards out. Unfortunately, by that point I was sitting behind the desk and couldn’t easily retrieve them. I really should have thought about that before starting.
Fortunately, I had my handy 18% grey pop-up card nearby, which I normally use for calibrating the camera. That became our improvised sorting surface instead, along with the two halves of the puzzle box.
We gradually emptied the box, turning all the pieces face-up as we went. Any edge pieces went straight onto the table, while pieces containing lettering were collected in one of the box lids. We also kept the corner pieces separate, although finding all four of them took a little longer than expected.
There were quite a few pieces to organise, and we were already running out of space before we’d even started putting the puzzle together. I was also becoming increasingly suspicious that we hadn’t actually emptied every piece out of the box.
While we were sorting, chat started discussing how long it should take to complete a 300-piece puzzle. Vvoornth reckoned Metro, who does speed puzzling, could probably finish one this size in under fifteen minutes. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get anywhere near that sort of time!
Megxta also mentioned having a rather intimidating 40,000-piece puzzle that she was afraid to start. Considering how long our old Skyrim puzzle took us to complete, I think I’ll be sticking with the smaller ones for our livestreams.
We spent a little time remembering some of our previous puzzle streams, including that troublesome Skyrim one and the puzzle I once made for Metro, which was actually a picture of jigsaw puzzles pieces. That one was deliberately awkward, and I think it took her considerably longer than expected.
Eventually, we had enough pieces sorted to start assembling the frame. The two sections of text seemed like a sensible place to begin because the lettering would hopefully make identifying the pieces a little easier.
That worked reasonably well at first. We started matching the larger letters, using the corners and the writing to work out the width of the puzzle. However, there seemed to be an endless supply of A’s, double L’s and other remarkably similar-looking pieces.
I kept finding letters that looked as though they belonged in one place, only to discover that they were actually meant to go somewhere else. A few times, I became convinced that a particular piece was still hiding in the box, only to find it sitting among the pieces I’d already sorted.
We gradually managed to assemble most of the lettering, including the Halloween message across the picture. There was still one elusive piece that we hadn’t spotted, but at least we were beginning to make some recognisable progress.
Getting the border completed was another achievement, although it took us around an hour and a half to reach that point. For a relatively small puzzle, it was certainly taking longer than I’d originally anticipated.
Meanwhile, chat was keeping us entertained with all sorts of conversations. Mr Smith had apparently taken on the important responsibility of counting the puzzle pieces, although I wasn’t entirely convinced his running total was keeping up with the number we’d taken out of the box.
There was also the ongoing business of tea, biscuits and cheese. Mr Smith disappeared to make himself a cup of tea, which naturally raised the question of why he hadn’t made one for everybody else. Apparently, the refreshments were sitting somewhere on a table, although none of them ever quite reached me.
Stryker_500 also stopped by while taking his little one to a kindergarten orientation day. We had a chat about that before returning to the usual jokes about Australia being upside down. I even suggested we should have another go at playing Minecraft in Australia mode sometime, just for Stryker.
Vvoornth was having his own difficulties trying to find a mop bucket, and CheeseCollector31 was showing us some puzzles he’d found, including a selection of Scottish-themed ones. The conversation eventually reached the subject of haggis, with Mr Smith announcing that he was going to dress up as one.
Gary joined us during the evening and celebrated an impressive 46 months of subscribing to the channel. Thank you again for that! There was also a little discussion about the music being rather loud, with Megxta suggesting that the combination of the background music and my voice might send her to sleep.
Gary later asked whether I had any advice for dealing with stress. My suggestion was to get some chickens. I’ve always found sitting quietly in the garden with my birds incredibly relaxing, and they helped me through a particularly difficult time after losing my stepdad. They’re wonderful little companions, and I wouldn’t be without them.
Back at the puzzle, once we’d made reasonable progress with the text and borders, we started concentrating on the actual picture. This was where things became considerably more challenging.
The problem was that almost all the remaining pieces seemed to be slightly different shades of orange, yellow, red and purple. We had a lovely autumn woodland scene to assemble, but when all those colours were scattered across the table, it became surprisingly difficult to work out which pieces belonged together.
We tried concentrating on recognisable details, including sections of the witch’s hat and clothing, the black cat, the lantern and some of the leaves. Every so often, we’d manage to fit a couple of pieces together and build up another small section of the picture.
Other times, I’d spend ages examining a particular piece, convinced I’d found exactly where it belonged, only to discover that it didn’t fit at all. There were also some awkward striped sections that I kept trying to match without much success.
Another interesting feature was the lettering printed on the backs of the pieces. There was quite a lot of what I was calling alphabet spaghetti, and I was curious to see what it would look like when the puzzle was completed and turned over. That was something we’d have to leave until we’d actually managed to finish the picture.
The stream also had a few distractions from our usual channel activities. A Pokémon hunting opportunity appeared, although the Pokémon managed to escape before anybody caught it. We also had a round of our virtual Hunger Games, which somehow ended with me winning against CheeseCollector31 through the power of a hug. There were naturally a few suggestions that the result might have been rigged!
AIDA was also attracting some attention, particularly when some new viewers started asking her questions about Team Fortress 2. We had a conversation about her rather unusual voice, which was originally part of an experiment from the previous Halloween and had never been changed back. She eventually had a technical hiccup, so I decided to give her a rest for the evening.
We also received a lovely raid from Shimcraft, who had been playing The Witcher 3. It was great to welcome everybody over, and we spent some time chatting about Shimcraft’s adventures, New Game Plus, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and other games while I continued trying to work out where the puzzle pieces belonged.
Thank you again to Shimcraft for bringing everyone along, and welcome to the new followers who joined us during the evening.
As we continued working on the puzzle, the jukebox provided a little more entertainment. We eventually had another listen to “Pieces on the Floor”, the song about Metro and Coco, whose tail has a habit of sending puzzle pieces flying. Fortunately, we managed to avoid anything quite that dramatic happening to our own puzzle.
Later in the evening, EntertainJD joined us for a chat about a parcel of snacks that had arrived, including Frazzles and shortbread. That naturally led to a conversation about biscuit tins eventually being reused for storing other things, particularly sewing supplies.
All the while, we were still slowly adding pieces to the picture. We had the frame finished, most of the text assembled and several sections of the witch and autumn scenery coming together. However, there was still quite a substantial area in the middle that needed completing.
By this point, my wrist was also beginning to get a little sore from the angle I was working at. We’d been sitting there for quite a while, and I was becoming increasingly doubtful that we were going to finish the puzzle during this stream.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be the case. Despite making some reasonable progress, we still had far too many pieces left to complete the whole picture in one sitting. I’d originally thought 300 pieces would be comfortably manageable, but those autumn colours had made the job considerably more difficult than expected.
So, rather than rush through the remaining sections, I decided we’d continue tomorrow evening as part of our HallowStream week.
That does mean postponing our planned Edge of Evil stream, where we were supposed to be rescuing Mittens the kitten from the crypt. I’m considering moving that into Friday’s slot instead of Alien: Fate of the Nostromo, simply because it’s been a couple of years since I last played the board game and I’m not sure I’ll have enough time this week to relearn everything and prepare the stream properly.
We’ve still got plenty of Halloween activities planned, including our annual return to Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds, so keep an eye on the schedule for any changes.
We finished the evening by thanking everybody for joining us, including Gary for the subscription, John Smith for the bits, and Shimcraft for the raid. We then headed over to OurChickenLife for some more relaxing entertainment.
It wasn’t quite the completed puzzle I’d hoped for when we opened the box, but we had a lovely evening catching up with everybody, and we’ve made a good start on the picture.
Hopefully, when we return tomorrow, we’ll finally work out where all those remaining orange pieces are supposed to go!
📺 Watch the Episode
If you missed our return to jigsaw puzzling, you can catch the full session here:
Watch Halloween Black Witch Jigsaw Puzzle – Part 1
You can also explore more videos on my YouTube channel or catch up with our previous puzzle evenings in the Jigsaw Puzzle playlist.
If you enjoy the video, remember to leave a like, share your thoughts in the comments and subscribe for more livestream recordings.
🔴 Join the Adventure Live
Fancy spending an evening helping us work out which orange piece belongs beside another almost identical orange piece?
Come and join us live on Twitch or YouTube!
There’s always plenty of conversation, some unexpected distractions and, occasionally, even a completed puzzle. We also enjoy welcoming fellow creators, as we did with Shimcraft’s raid during this stream.
You don’t need to be an expert puzzler. Just bring yourself along, get comfortable and join in.
💬 Community & Links
The stream may have finished, but there’s plenty more happening around the channel. Whether you’re following our HallowStream adventures, finding the music or catching up with the community, here’s where you can find everything.
Live — Come and spend an evening with us:
Twitch | YouTube
Community — Keep up with the schedule and join our conversations:
Discord
Socials — Follow the latest updates and moments between streams:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X
Music — Listen to my music beyond the livestream:
Spotify | Apple Music
Support — Help keep the streams and creative projects going:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs
More — Explore my other projects and the work behind the channel:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog
🎃 The Witch Will Have to Wait Until Tomorrow
We didn’t quite manage to complete our Halloween puzzle in the one sitting I’d hoped for, so tomorrow we’ll be returning to finish it. That unfortunately means postponing our planned Edge of Evil stream, where we were supposed to rescue Mittens the kitten from the crypt.
I’m considering moving Edge of Evil into Friday’s slot instead of Alien: Fate of the Nostromo. It’s been a couple of years since I last played that board game, and with the amount of work I’ve got this week, I’m not sure I’ll have time to relearn everything and prepare it properly.
We’ve also still got Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds coming up, one of my favourite Halloween traditions. As we only return to it each Halloween, getting through the whole game is taking a few years! I’ve now also got the Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color Buffy games, which I may have to find time for before next Halloween.
For now, though, thank you to everybody who joined us, to Shimcraft for the raid, and to everyone who helped make this a lovely, relaxing evening. We finished by raiding into OurChickenLife.
Hopefully tomorrow we’ll finally find where all those remaining autumn-coloured pieces belong!
— Dr Ravenholm
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