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, Mr. 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,” Mr. 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. “If leaving the edges sharp would make the puzzle uncomfortable to handle, I will not hesitate to choose chamfering,” he said.
Mr. 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. “One puzzle requires chamfering at roughly 2,000 places, which can feel overwhelming at times,” he said.
Once assembled, Magnus 60 is roughly spherical. 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 colorful paper polyhedra models, who died in 2017.
“No matter who uses mathematics or how they use it, the result is always the same,” Mr. Yananose said. “And the fact that there are only five regular polyhedra never changes.”
Having never attended university, he taught himself mathematics, physics and the art of puzzlemaking. “Simple truths like this are always in my mind,” he said. “And I often think about how to arrange these fundamental ideas so that they can take a physical form.”
Earlier this year, Mr. 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 features innovative new mechanical puzzles. The competition is part of the annual International Puzzle Party, which this year convened in Tokyo. Nob Yoshigahara was a famous Japanese puzzle designer and a pioneering puzzle-partier. At one gathering, Mr. Yoshigahara jumped out of a supersize Rubik’s Cube like a showgirl from a cake.
Mr. 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!”
In the 2025 competition, Tortoise Protocol was runner-up for the Puzzlers’ Award, which is determined by attendees who vote for their favorite. The year before, another of Mr. 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 realize 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.
Diagonal Twins
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,” Mr. Hashimoto said. “I want to make everyone smile. I believe that puzzles are not just about competition but also about creating peace and harmony.”
Chained Frames, Tetromino Island
The jury awarded two honorable mentions to Koichi Miura, who lives in Tokyo and works at a life insurance company. “Chained Frames” is a take-apart puzzle; remove the two identical loops from the third piece. “Tetromino Island” is an assembly puzzle; place the five yellow pieces flat on the island without overlapping. The motivation for “Tetromino Island,” Mr. Miura said, “was born from my attempt to create a puzzle that incorporates the concept of a shape’s center of gravity.”
Since 2018, he has entered 13 puzzles in the competition (sometimes more than one per year; three is the maximum). To date, 10 of his designs have been honored 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.
Fáfnir’s Fortress
Fáfnir’s Fortress by Luke Waier, of Waier Creations, his puzzle-making company, received a Jury Grand Prize (one of two awarded this year). Mr. Waier likes to incorporate misdirection into his designs — psychological friction, of sorts. For instance, he might require the solver to “do what appears to be moving backward,” he said. “You’ve removed a part, but the solution actually requires you at some point to put the part back where you got it. This plays on the solver’s perception of forward progress being associated with removing more pieces.”
Mr. Waier doesn’t solve or collect puzzles; he only designs them as a creative outlet. “I love designing and building things, have my whole life — that’s why I’m an engineer,” he said. Mr. Waier is the lead engineer at REEcyle, in Houston, which recycles rare-earth elements from hard drives and other sources. (He designed the company’s drive disassembly machine; the prototype disassembles more than 1,000 hard drives per day.)
Mr. Waier also loves storytelling. Fáfnir’s Fortress is loosely inspired by a Norse legend. “Fáfnir was the original treasure-hoarding dragon,” he said. The puzzle has three objectives: Find the sword, slay the dragon, reclaim the treasure. Mr. Waier thinks of such themed, sequential discovery puzzles as “the mechanical equivalent to a video game.”
Arch Nemesis
Arch Nemesis, the debut puzzle by Rio Chilson, a mechanical engineer in San Diego, also won a Jury Grand Prize. “It started around one specific mechanism I wanted to try,” Mr. Chilson said — a common gear mechanism. But he had an idea for a twist that would make it his own. “I was like, ‘That’s kind of cool, it’s different, I haven’t seen it before in the boxes I’ve played with, so I’ll try that.’ And then it just kind of snowballed from there.” He began tinkering in 2021 and had a rough computer-aided design model by 2022. Then came an oversize prototype (10 by 8 by 7 inches), followed by four copies of the ultimate puzzle (8 by 6 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.
Gordian Knot, Squared
The original Gordian Knot (left) was created in 2010 by the puzzlemaker Robert Yarger, of Edmond, Okla., 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) — perhaps with the help of the 10-page illustrated instruction book. Owing to its complexity and the limited edition of 28 copies, this puzzle is coveted and hard to get your hands on.
Enter the 2025 remake by Lewis Evans, of London, designed in consultation with Mr. Yarger, which won the Jury First Prize. It is almost an exact replica in polyurethane resin and tin alloy; Mr. Evans’s background is in making prototypes for industrial engineers and designers. And the goal is the same. But Mr. Evans incorporated some new moves and mechanics, including a surprise toward the end for those who knew the original. And whereas Mr. Yarger used wood glue and shims to achieve just the right mechanical tightness, Mr. Evans used finely tuned screws.
“If something feels too loose or too stiff, then it leads to unsatisfaction,” Mr. Evans said. “There’s a lot to be said for a satisfying ‘click.’”
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