Witch's Kitchen Escape Puzzle

Entertaining and the rightblevel of difficulty for young teens and up

I just finished the Witch's Kitchen puzzle tonight and I loved it. I spent a few hours a day, for three days, working mostly alone, my husband helped assemble a little bit, and I solved the riddles on my own. It was my first time doing a Ravensburger escape puzzle and I'm looking forward to doing more BUT I also do a lot of escape room games, treasure hunts, and "point and click" adventure video games with hidden objects, riddles and brain teasers. If that's not your thing, then this puzzle probably won't make a lot of sense to you. It's still a lovely jigsaw, even without the "escape" riddle part of it, but it is not quite like other jigsaw puzzles. 1) Unlike some jigsaw puzzles, there are no letters or clues on the back, such as "AAAAAA" or "BBBBBB" etc, and it doesn't come with a poster to lay down on the table as a guide. 2) The picture on the box is not exactly the same as the picture in the completed puzzle, though it is close enough that I still found it very helpful. 3) The edge pieces are cut so they are interchangeable. The internal pieces are not this way, just the edges, so it makes assembling the border a challenge, but not impossible. The puzzle dimensions are on the box, which helps. I put together most of the border, but not all of it, and then started working on the inside for awhile. A lot of people are posting that the solution is incorrect but I didn't have a problem with it. It didn't even occur to me that there was anything wrong until I came here to rate the puzzle and I read the other reviews. I don't want to give answers or spoilers, so I'll just say this: The solution is to IDENTIFY the antidote. If you've done that, nothing else matters.

I've tried other mystery puzzles and they are not a great as Ravensburger. So many hidden clues in the actual puzzle!! Great quality and pictures. This one is the most difficult thus far, and this is my third "Ravensburger" puzzle. Really look at ALL the clues and be very mindful. I would not buy another brand as these are so fun and a real challenge.

First off, I know that Ravensburger is a great puzzle company. The quality of the materials is top notch and the picture is really detailed and imaginative. I was taken in by the idea as I have been playing a lot of mystery-type games during the pandemic (Detective, Chronicles of Crime, Unlock, etc.), and this seemed like a cool concept. Worst case scenario, I would at least enjoy putting a puzzle together. There are some cool tricks to it like the picture not being quite what's on the box and some pieces connectable even though they don't go together, but that added to the challenge and made us think a bit more. Where the shortcomings lie is in the escape element. Once the puzzle is put together, there are some hidden word/number puzzles to solve that lead to the final conclusion. I have done a lot of similar puzzles before, so this was relatively easy for me. The final solution was a bit of a letdown since it didn't quite "fit", but it wasn't a dealbreaker. As I mentioned, the quality is great, but the game did come with a bunch of extra rectangular pieces that are the cut off border of the whole puzzle. It's doesn't ruin the experience, but it feels kind of lazy to leave scraps in the box. I have been intentionally vague in my review to avoid spoilers, and now that I am looking at other reviews I see a lot of people (both positive and negative) haven't been nearly as respectful. My recommendation is this: if you like challenging puzzles, this is a great one. If you also like math and word problems, you'll like this just a bit more on top of that. If you are interested, avoid as much information as you can.

This puzzle started out extremely frustrating because all of the edge pieces fit together to each other even if they are wrong. After we suffered through and got the edge finally assembled, the puzzle itself was pretty fun and the pieces mostly fit together well. And then we started the fun of figuring out all the clues and solving them...we did need to use some tips from the website but were able to figure it out for the most part and had a lot of fun. UNTIL we couldn't get the answer piece to fit with the other pieces. We worked for hours and kept thinking we must have done something wrong and didn't have the correct answer. Finally we gave in and opened the secret envelope to reveal the answer and we did have the right answer! Except our pieces weren't cut right and they wouldn't fit together. This was extremely disappointing and frustrating and left us feeling like we wasted hours and hours on something that didn't even work. I would definitely not purchase another one of these and risk the answer not even working after you do all the work of figuring out the clues.

Without spoiling anything, this escape puzzle was a fun challenge. It took 3 of us about 3 1/2 hours to complete. Between 2 of us, we figured out the clues at the end pretty quickly. The third person in our group just opens the answers and talked about how no one could possibly know what to do to solve the clues as she watched us. We proved her wrong, though. So the difficulty of the clues depends on individuals. I’m looking forward to trying one of the kids versions with my nephews! I will definitely buy more from this collection to try.

I've done three or four of this series so far and this one is one of the strongest. My favorite is the astronomy tower, but this one is a close second place. First off, it's a great jigsaw puzzle--lots of different sections to work on, so you don't have to do much grinding. Then once you've put it together, you look for clues that form numbers. Each number corresponds to an edge piece that you remove to form a meta-puzzle at the end. Because of this mechanic, it does mean that the edge pieces are all VERY similar, so if you're usual strategy is to assemble the edge pieces first, I do NOT recommend that tactic here.

We had such high hopes for this experience. I will also be writing to Ravensburger. They are usually quality items, but they really dropped the ball here. We spent 3 days assembling the puzzle and finally started working on all the codes / riddles. My children (18 and 10) did a great job solving the puzzles, and figured out most of it. However, when it came down to the final answer, SPOILER ALERT Do not keep reading if you want to solve it yourself They built the "frame" successfully, but no pieces (including the correct answer) fit into the frame. They got everything correct, and I had to open the envelope to help them. They tried the correct piece in the frame and it absolutely didn't fit. The correct (solution) piece definitely does not fit. So frustrating and disappointing! This is NOT a reflection on the seller, as the item was sent promptly and in perfect condition.