Happy New Year! My top ten(ish) puzzles of 2025

Happy New Year to all you crazy people out there who also are hooked on puzzles! 2025 has been an odd year for me. I should have had more time for puzzling due to dropping some clinical work but the admin/committee work I picked up in its place seemed to have taken up just as much, if not more time and I seem to have had less time for puzzling and oddly even bought less puzzles than previous years. The puzzles that I did manage to get were very high quality and also rather difficult. Quite a few were so difficult that I haven't managed to solve them yet which means they cannot technically be included in my top ten(ish) puzzles.

Of course, I do have to show them off as top puzzles obtained but not completed.

Not Solved Yet

The Twins box alongside its predecessor, the Angel Box

The Twins box has been discussed for several years. Wil has had it in his head to create for many years but sourcing the parts has proven very difficult. This year, it finally reached fruition and was made available to owners of the Angel box with matching serial numbers. Mine arrived damaged thanks to UK customs and also the first step had been opened. I took it to the last MPP for Ali to reset and have been fiddling with it for a while. It is bloody heavy and hard work to play with. I suspect this will take me a very long time.

Jukebox from MoonTree puzzles

The Jukebox won the Jury grand prize in the 2024 IPP. I was staggered when it was going to be produced in significant numbers but put my name down straight away. After months of waiting and lots of updates showing progress, it arrived in July. I have admired it, and put it on display but had no time at all to play with it. I am sure it will end up in my top ten when I get to play.

Gordian Knot

The Gordian knot by Robert Yarger has been a holy grail puzzle for me for years now. I was so pleased when it was made available in a cast resin from Lewis Evans. I have gotten lost with this recently and put it down for a while. Unfortunately one of the metal plaques stuck on it has come off but once I've worked out where it came from I can stick it back on. It is a beautifully made creation and has fulfilled a long time wish of mine! 

Clutch Lock from Andrew Coles

I bought the Clutch Lock at an MPP in March. It is a beautifully made heavy creation and like many lock puzzles, I have absolutely no idea what I am doing! I managed to unlock the shackle and now have a lock that I can open and close but cannot remove the key from the keyway any more. I have picked this up regularly throughout the year and have no clue what to try next. This might take me a decade!

OPUP from Dan Shane

One piece packing took me a while

I have to admit to being slightly biased...I do tend to prefer puzzles made from beautiful wood or meticulously made from metal. It is unusual for me to really love a plastic puzzle but the OPUP from Dan Shane really caught my attention. It really shouldn't be that hard but it is and I managed to trigger the packing but despite weeks of trying have completely failed in the unpacking challenge. There's one obvious step and that's as far as I have got! Bugger! One piece in a box and a cable - how hard can it be?

The original one piece packing puzzle from Eric Fuller took me a very long time so I expect that the unpacking puzzle might take me just as long!

Iteration 23

Crawl Space

Dead Mortimer

Pinhead

Over this year I received several sequential discovery boxes from Dee Dixon and haven't managed to solve any of them. NOT a single one! I am rubbish at puzzles!

Finally we actually reach my top ten(ish) puzzles of 2025 and here we mean the puzzles that I have actually managed to solve. In retrospect it has been a rather good year for collecting and puzzle quality!

Almost Top Ten

Tetra claws by Derek Bosch

Hardly a year goes by without an entry from the genius that is Derek Bosch. His awesome brain seems to work in more dimensions than the rest of us creating interesting geometric shapes and here he managed to create some N-ary puzzles with pieces that have an odd mind-bending way of interacting with each other. I adored these and for the tougher ones in the series had to take notes on how the sequences went.

Horns of Booth

Petit Albert

Dr Volker Latussek has designed and produced with the help of Jakub's Pelikan team, a LOT of fabulous challenges. They are all stunning of course and amazing challenges but two particularly stood out to me in the sheer elegance of their solutions. They were wonderful and the fact that they are in my almost their list shows just how good a year we had for puzzles. Thank you Volker and Jakub.

10 - Interlocking puzzles from Juno

Juno's Euroka 10x3 remained in pieces for 2 years before I finally managed to assemble it - the shout reverberated around the house and upset Mrs S but she did end up pleased that I didn't have a pile of pieces lying around any more.

Tornado burr

At the beginning of the year Juno also released this amazing and fun version of the Tornado burr which required a LOT of courage to dismantle and a lot of fun - it's a masterpiece!

9 - Safe by Pelikan

Safe from Pelikan

Every year Pelikan produce something large and fabulous. This year I was able to get a copy of the Safe. It's beautifully made with a really nice mechanism. It has a fun little story to it and best of all, it looks great on display. Thank you Jakub, for another brilliant challenge!

8 - Who Dares Wins by Shane and the Two Brass Monkeys

Damn! This took me a long time

When the lock brain of Shane gets together with the manufacturing expertise of Steve and Ali, you know you are in for a fun time. Those buggers kept me frustrated for 8 bloody months! Eventually I had to be brave and do the unthinkable and of course, it worked. Absolutely astounding puzzle which takes pride of place alongside all my other Hales puzzles. Thanks guys!

7 - Ages by Brian Young

It lived up to its name!

Hell! This one is almost embarrassing. Brian named it Ages after how long Burrtools said it would take to find the solution. Indeed, it took me AGES! Nearly 6 years. The Aha! moment was amazing but even after that point there was a tremendously difficult burr to solve that included a rotational move and then a sequential discovery element to release the small piece of Opal inside. I was so relieved to finally beat it but I cannot bring myself to put it away yet as I keep picking it up to fiddle with the interesting mechanisms. Thank you Brian.

6 - Keeboxes

All four Keeboxes bought together

Having been shown these at an MPP and forgotten about them until the next MPP, I finally got around to purchasing the whole set at once. Much to the disgust of Mrs S who is not keen on chunks of plastic lying around the house (she barely tolerates the beautiful wood). However, the puzzling involved in these amazing sequential discovery creations is truly fabulous. They get progressively more difficult until the last one, yellow, which is level 4 out of 5 and took me many hours of failure before I got there. They have not made a version which is level 5 yet but the thought frightens me a lot. I keep looking at their Etsy store in the hope that there will be another one.

5 - Locks by Boaz

Loophole

Ant Hunt

When Boaz produces something we all sit up and pay attention. These arrived in 2024 but took me many months to solve. They are beautifully logical and magnificently well made. This reminds me that he has produced a new one recently and I haven't bought it yet. I will need to remedy that when my bank account fills back up.

4 - OMG! Minima's, So Many Minima's

Minima's 1 to 8

Minima's 9 to 12

When Frederic Boucher designs something we are all interested. The fact that Tye Stahly and Jakub manufacture these puzzles is just confirmation of how good they are. The Minima set appeared in my top ten last year but they were beautifully recreated by Pelikan this year and everything is improved by wood. Also having boxes that you can't see through makes them even more challenging.

But that wasn't all...

Minima Texas

Minima Duo - Tye's IPP exchange puzzle

Then addition of a ball to the challenge makes things even more interesting with Minima Smiley in two guises :

There were even more but I have to stop or I will never manage to finish this post!

3 - Popplock T14

Quite possibly the best one yet? 

Rainer produces something special every year or two. They are ferociously expensive but you can see and feel the quality. There are a few over the years that I have not managed to solve but this one led me on a nice path from the very beginning. It was absolutely wonderful with a sequence of mechanisms that I have never seen before and would actually not have thought possible. Absolutely amazing!

2 - Moonage M5 by Stephan

Moonage M5 by Stephan Baumegger

This incredible creation from Stephan was one of the top 10 voter getters by the IPP attendees in 2024. It looked stunning and having won such admiration, I couldn't resist getting a copy. I wasn't disappointed - it looks amazing and has a whole series of Aha! moments that lead you to the end goal of creating the lunar landing scene. Just fabulous and only just beaten out of the number one spot.

1 - Tortoise Protocol by Juno

Tortoise Protocol

Having missed out on the award winning Hippo last year (funds were low), I made sure that I had enough available for the next Junichi Yananose sequential discovery puzzle. This one is beautiful and packs a series of unbelievable challenges into the solve process. It made me do unspeakably awful things to a tortoise but the end result was fabulous. Even the reset had a little trap to it. Juno is an absolute master of design and woodwork. Thank you, my friend!

There are still an embarrassingly large number of puzzles that I have bought this year and previous years that remain unsolved. To name a few...The Crazy Double Circle Cube frightens me to death and I have left it alone for the whole year! The Box of Celts remains locked at step one! Sigh! A big bunch of wire puzzles from Aaron seem to be impossible for me but I keep trying!

Do you agree with my top 10? If you have any different thoughts then please comment below or even use my Contact page to tell me how wrong I am. I look forward to your thoughts. 

Happy New Year to you all!

I really hope that you all have a fabulous year in 2026 with good health, success and plenty of wonderful puzzling. I look forward to entertaining and maybe helping many of you in this year.