This beautiful puzzle's picture was painted by the late K. Chin. I have obtained some prints from his son, and have the exclusive rights to this image for puzzle making.

For other K. Chin prints see: K. Chin - Prints

Puzzle #20 was my first attempt at cutting the "Green Dragon". That puzzle came out well, but had a number of problems, include some serious errors (in my opinion! other say I'm too much of a perfectionist) in the line cutting, plus several technical problems, keeping it from market.

Significant milestones for the Green Dragon puzzle

• The best puzzle to put together - a real challenge! A really cool puzzle in my highly biased opinion.
• Further exploration into "line cutting". This puzzle was hard to cut due to the numerous very sharp angles in the picture, for example, the claws. The dragon's body is subdivided on its scale boundaries, so the cutting lines are nearly invisible.
• Continued exploration into Indirectly Interlocking Edges. Thank you Bob Armstrong for this great idea, I'm permanently indebted to you for this. Some of the puzzle edges interlock directly, as the color line cutting comes near the edges and I wanted the overall puzzle boundary to interlock.

Problems

• None, perhaps I could have put a little more effort to solve some of the edge interlocking problems near the color line cutting.

As it happened (from my Journal archives)

May 13, 2000

Evening - I started cutting a new Green Dragon puzzle in an attempt to create one with enough quality for eBay. I've been reminded how difficult a puzzle this puzzle to make. I'm a little over half though and I put at least six hours into cutting it. I had a visitor while cutting the puzzle and he was stunned than anyone could have the patience to cut this kind of puzzle. My pace has been the slowest so far for any puzzle, as high quality color line cutting takes a lot of time and concentration. The quality of this puzzle is a lot better than the first Green Dragon puzzle, and should I complete the puzzle without a major mistake, it will be placed for sale on eBay. Regarding pricing, although I had revised my pricing policy, an exception will have to be made for puzzles with a lot of color line cutting. I can't see how I'd charge less than $300 for a commission to cut this puzzle. However, when I place this puzzle for sale on eBay I'll start it off at $1 as I want to see how the market will price a puzzle like this.

Most of the edges are of the Indirect Interlocking Edges type, although there is some direct interlock to provide a secure border in areas where the color line cutting approaches the edge.

May 14, 2000

The Green Dragon puzzle is finished. The puzzle came out well, particularly the color line cutting is much better than the first Green Dragon puzzle. There are 269 pieces, The puzzle will be placed for sale on eBay with a starting bid of one dollar. I will have a pre-auction information page set up, probably tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest. This is a beautiful and difficult puzzle.

I decided to have a separate page about "Boxes".