Next Up: Michigan

Obviously we love a Michigan-themed puzzle around here, having based our entire company around the concept, so we’re excited to break into Michigan by White Mountain Puzzles, a James Mellett design.

The box calls this one “Michigan” but the White Mountain website says it’s “Best of Michigan” – we’ll go with the box.

This is one that Jenny picked up at a puzzle swap at her library a few weeks ago. The idea is similar to I Love Michigan, also by White Mountain. It features a collage-style collection of artwork celebrating things found in our state. A lot of that is some of the relatively standard Michigan fare: Cars and lighthouses and the Mackinac Bridge.

There are some museums that I didn’t expect to see called out (specifically Impression 5 Science Center in Lansing). Additionally, I was thrilled to see Pleasure Island noted. My extended family is mostly in the Muskegon area and Pleasure Island was a part of a lot of summer vacations for me, despite the park only being open for 16 years.

I have already noticed one bit of artwork that doesn’t sit right with me but I’ll save complaining about that for the wrap-up post. It’s absolutely a nit-pick that most people wouldn’t notice but just happens to fall right in my wheelhouse.

This one doesn’t seem like it’ll be particularly hard. It’s 1000 pieces but they’re the larger White Mountain pieces. I don’t think we’re going to crank it out in one night but I do expect it to be relatively quick.

One programming note… We didn’t do a Next Up post for Playbill Presents 5th Edition and that might be something that happens more often going forward. We’ve found ourselves feeling like we can’t start a puzzle until we do a Next Up post for it. Sometimes we’ve tried to balance it by starting the puzzle but not posting to social media until we get the Next Up post published. Playbill Presents 5th Edition didn’t get any social media posts because of that. So we might start skipping the Next Up posts, diving right in, and sharing more in-progress photos on the socials. We’ll see.