Tobar tile fish puzzle - Toys

Sounds like you're describing what we usually call a 'fish eye' in the paint. It usually comes from a greasy film on the surface. Normally the surface would need to be cleaned/degreased and/or primed before painting. Not sure what was involved in your process of 'making art tiles' but if you painted them with an oil/alkyd/solvent based paint, it could create a 'fish eye' effect if the glossy accents you applied on top is latex/water-based.

The problem with this puzzle is in the wording of the constraints. We all assume that every edge has to touch a matching edge, but it does not actually say so in the rules. It can be proven that there is no solution if you require every turtle and crab edge to be matched, since there is an odd number of edges in total for each species.

I also wrote a program to compute the solution and it generated many configurations using 35 tiles with this bogus constraint. The final tile can be placed in the last spot if you allow two of its path edges to touch the non-path edges of surrounding tiles.

https://gist.github.com/adufilie/7da4d16889169add3866dfa42b7f9847

I don't have the completed puzzle in front of me now but I have done it and the mermaid is there. It looks just like the one on the box and I think I found it on one of the fish. Keep at it, it's there :)

Their website has tips and solutions for that puzzle here: http://www.give-me-a-clue.com/products/tile/

Fairly straightforward. It's where you start. Start with the 5 headed and 1 tail tile in the middle. The rest is just trial and error, about an hour.

The top left square has the Black and White striped fish in the middle.
At the top is the Orange fish swimming right to left.
At the bottom is the Black and Yellow fish with Orange stripes wmimming right to left.
On the left is the green fish with yellow stripes swimming left to right with its mouth behind the fish in the middle.
On the right is the bluish fish with yellow horizontal stripes swimming left to right.
Hope this is a good enough discription, good luck!

This same puzzle was copied and handed out at a Mensa meeting according to this link:
http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/sheep/index.html
I have verified that the Mensa puzzle and the "Big Sheep Puzzle" at www.thebigsheep.co.uk are identical. The spotted sheep are replaced by the brown sheep in the Mensa puzzle. The instructions on the box claim 2 identical tiles, but there are really 2 sets of identical tiles in the puzzle. The author of the link above found 55 distinct solutions.

I found these instructions at boardgamegeek.com...
This unique children's game spawned a whole line of Labyrinth Games. The board has a set of tiles fixed solidly onto it; the remaining tiles that make up the labyrinth slide in and out of the rows made on the board. There is always one tile not in the labyrinth. Players take turns taking this extra tile and sliding it into a row on the labyrinth, moving all the tiles and pushing one out the other side of the board, which becomes the piece for the next player to add to the maze.
Players move around the shifting tunnels of the labyrinth in a race to collect various treasures. Whoever collects all of their treasures first and returns to their home space wins!
This game is very simple at first glance and is an excellent puzzle-solving game for children; it can also be played among adults using more strategy and more of a cutthroat approach.

I found these instructions at boardgamegeek.com...
This unique children's game spawned a whole line of Labyrinth Games. The board has a set of tiles fixed solidly onto it; the remaining tiles that make up the labyrinth slide in and out of the rows made on the board. There is always one tile not in the labyrinth. Players take turns taking this extra tile and sliding it into a row on the labyrinth, moving all the tiles and pushing one out the other side of the board, which becomes the piece for the next player to add to the maze.
Players move around the shifting tunnels of the labyrinth in a race to collect various treasures. Whoever collects all of their treasures first and returns to their home space wins!
This game is very simple at first glance and is an excellent puzzle-solving game for children; it can also be played among adults using more strategy and more of a cutthroat approach.