Friction is a force that opposes the motion of one object relative to another — and it’s always an important consideration for Junichi Yananose, a Japanese Australian puzzlemaker. The plan for a new puzzle might work perfectly within the design software, Yananose explained in an email interview, but once the pieces are machined and put together, “friction interferes and spoils the enjoyment”.
“When bringing an idea into form, I pay close attention to the tactile experience during play,” Yananose said. For example, he typically prefers to soften sharp corners along the edges of puzzle pieces with a flat, angled cut — a chamfer, typically at 45 degrees — even if that compromises aesthetics.
Yananose, who goes by Juno, and his wife, Yukari, run a puzzle business called Pluredo from their home in Queensland, Australia. His finely crafted wooden creations sell out quickly.
In November, he debuted Magnus 60, an assembly puzzle. Specifically, it’s a burr puzzle, comprising 60 rectangular, notched and interlocking sticks made from six types of wood.
Once assembled, Magnus 60 assumes a roughly spherical shape. Its design is based on the symmetrical properties of two classic geometric solids: the regular dodecahedron (which has 12 regular pentagons as its faces) and the regular icosahedron (with 20 equilateral triangular faces).
The puzzle is named after Magnus J. Wenninger, a mathematician, Benedictine monk and prolific builder of colourful paper polyhedra models, who died in 2017.
“No matter who uses mathematics or how they use it, the result is always the same,” Yananose said. Having never attended university, he taught himself mathematics, physics and the art of puzzlemaking.
This year, Yananose introduced Tortoise Protocol, a sequential discovery puzzle box. (He considered naming it Turtle Recall, but that’s a pop-folk-rock band).
Tortoise Protocol was his entry in the 2025 Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition, which is part of the annual International Puzzle Party that convened in Tokyo this year. Nob Yoshigahara was a famous Japanese puzzle designer and a pioneering puzzle-partier. At one gathering, Yoshigahara jumped out of a supersize Rubik’s Cube like a showgirl from a cake.
Yananose is often motivated by “devilish ideas”, he said. “For Tortoise, I wanted to create a situation where, once the head, tail and all four limbs retract completely, there is no turning back.” The goal is to open the box and find the secret compartment and prize, a token that reads, “Happy Puzzling!”
Tortoise Protocol was runner-up for the Puzzlers’ Award, which is determined by attendees who vote for their favourite. The year before, another of Yananose’s creature puzzles, Hugo the Hippo, won Puzzle of the Year — it took both the Puzzlers’ Award and the Jury Grand Prize, which is selected by a judging committee.
His motivations are always different. With the hippo, he said, “I had never seen a puzzle that would ‘attack’ the player, so I wanted to realise that concept in some form.”
He also composed a “Hippopotamic Oath” that puzzlers are asked to pledge. It reads in part:
I shall handle thy hippo pieces with care, as gentle as a breeze through the jungle’s foliage.
I shall remember that the journey of puzzling is as important as the completion, and so, I shall not rush nor rage against thy arboreal enigmas.
So help me, Hippo.
Here are the top puzzles from this year’s design competition; many are pricey collectibles.
The Award Goes To...
The Puzzlers’ Award went to Diagonal Twins, by Yasuhiro Hashimoto, who is based in Tokyo. The goal: pack all four of its pieces into the box. “When I create a puzzle, I don’t think about how much I can confuse people but rather how much I can entertain and move them,” Hashimoto said.
Honourable Mention
The jury awarded two honourable mentions to Koichi Miura, who lives in Tokyo and works at a life insurance company. Chained Frames is a take-apart puzzle; Tetromino Island is an assembly puzzle. The motivation for Tetromino Island, Miura said, “was born from my attempt to create a puzzle that incorporates the concept of a shape’s centre of gravity.”
Since 2018, he has entered 13 puzzles in the competition (sometimes more than one per year; three is the maximum). Ten of his designs have been honoured with an award. “The most in the world!” he said. He is also the only designer to win three awards in a single year, which he has now done twice. This year, his puzzle Toaster was among the top 10 in voting for the Puzzlers’ Award.
Best Debut
Arch Nemesis, the debut puzzle by Rio Chilson, a mechanical engineer in San Diego, US, also won a Jury Grand Prize. “It started around one specific mechanism I wanted to try,” Chilson said — a common gear. But he had an idea for a twist that would make it his own.
He began tinkering in 2021 and had a rough computer-aided design model by 2022. Then came an oversize prototype (10 inches by 8 inches by 7 inches), followed by four copies of the ultimate puzzle (8 inches by 6 inches by 5 inches), crafted over two years. Now he has 21 copies underway in his garage workshop. “I go out there almost every night after work,” he said.
The Remake
The original Gordian Knot was created in 2010 by puzzlemaker Robert Yarger, of Edmond, Oklahoma, who is known for his deliberate “painted into a corner” creative process, which forces ingenuity. The puzzle is a patchwork of 130 interwoven exotic wood scraps from previous puzzles.
The goal: find the key and open the hidden compartment (it takes at least 36 steps). Owing to the limited edition of 28 copies, this puzzle is hard to get your hands on folks.
Enter the 2025 remake by Lewis Evans of London, designed in consultation with Yarger, which won the Jury First Prize. It is almost an exact replica in polyurethane resin and tin alloy.
But Evans incorporated some new moves and mechanics. And whereas Yarger used wood glue and shims to achieve just the right mechanical tightness, Evans used finely tuned screws.
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