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. 

Grabbed By Grabarchuk

New releases from Peter Grabarchuk's Crafty Sunflower Puzzles

Yes, I am working yet again this weekend! For that reason, this is a rather quick blog post to show off something fun that will make a nice gift for the puzzler in your life or for someone who you would like to entice into becoming a puzzler.

This is the second release this year of puzzles by the Grabarchuk family. I was too busy to participate when those ones came out but the puzzles are still available and you can read about them on Ken's blog here. This time I was still too busy but felt bad for not helping the last time. Peter contacted me last week to ask if I was interested in showing off his newest creations to the world. He gave me a nice discount which was eaten up by the postage fees but it was worth it. The puzzles arrived earlier in the week and I was delighted to have a play for a couple of days this week. As you can see, Amenadiel was also very keen to play! Both our cats (the girl is called Mazikeen) seem to love 3D printed plastic as well as metal puzzles. They lick them which becomes very unpleasant and have been known to run off with pieces.

This release includes a burr/assembly puzzle (12 piece), a cubic assembly puzzle with multiple challenges and an entanglement puzzle. They range in difficulty from very easy to extremely challenging! Today I will be showing off the two that I managed to solve before having to go to work again.

Flower Coaster

Flower coaster

This is a nice little toy for any beginner puzzler which can double up as a drinks coaster should that suit your taste. It is available in a whole bunch of different colour combinations. The oval rings are interlocked and sit on a tray for transport and use as a coaster. A quick shale will separate them into 2 interlocked rings with 4 grooves in each of them. It is worthwhile, rotating them about and swivelling them a bit before trying to reassemble.

4 grooves in each

Having done that, the reassembly is a nice quick challenge. It is not hard for any real puzzle enthusiast but for a child, this might be fun and make them think. I am not certain that I would actually use it as a coaster as I don't know how it would deal with hot items or liquid spills but for a small amount of money it is quite nice.

It is presented in a circular acrylic box with a stand which I very nearly lost to the cat!

He picked it up and ran off with it!

Checkered Chairs

Checkered Chairs

Now this one was a whole lot of fun as well as a significant challenge! It arrives as a 2x2x2 (or 6x6x6) cube in an acrylic box with a booklet of challenges. I adore a puzzle with multiple challenges to keep me occupied. After the cat licked it a bit, the cube fell apart to reveal the reason for the name. The pieces (8 of them) are all variants of chair shapes with 2 colours forming different portions. When you purchase these puzzles there are a bunch of options for the colour combinations as well as the ability to choose a custom combination of colours. 

8 Chairs

Obviously one of the challenges is to recreate the cube for storage but the booklet provides 17 challenges of varying difficulty. The first 9 puzzles are to use all 8 pieces to create various shapes that are shown in the book like the one to the left. 

Initially I found this really quite tough but after a half hour of fiddling and experimenting I began to get my thought processes into alignment and started to solve the challenges. Once you have managed the puzzles that use all the pieces then it is time to move on to the next section where you make smaller shapes but using only a few of the pieces (no, they don't tell you which ones to use. The starter for this section needs only 4 pieces to make a 2x2x1 (or 6x6x3) tile:

4 piece challenge

Then you move to 3 challenges of 6 pieces and these are significantly more difficult. The last one must have taken me an hour!

The final challenges (which I have not had a chance to try yet) show only the positions of the dark cubes and expect you to create those shapes with the lighter pieces arranged wherever possible to allow it to all fit together. My few minutes of trial and error with this one has revealed that despite the ability to put one colour wherever you want, it is significantly harder to solve these than the other challenges. I have been quite surprised about this.

12 Logs

12 Logs

I have not yet had time to try this one but it looks like a significantly challenging assembly puzzle that uses logic to put together. Again, it is available in a lot of different colours. It will come apart quite easily to reveal 12 notched logs with the notches in different configurations on each of them. The aim is to put it back together into the cube that fits in the storage box by working out which ones interlock in different directions and in what order they need to be inserted. The booklet contains the solution if you need help. It fell open when I opened the box for the photo and it would appear that the logs sometimes need to be inserted in pairs or even clumps rather than one at a time. I suspect that there is some real logic to working this out and I will need some time to sit and try it. Ken managed to assemble his copy by using an illegal rotation so this potentially gives you an extra challenge to try

This puzzle is not for the beginner although the presence of the solution means that it could be given to a newbie with confidence that they could assemble it with some help.

These are very nicely made 3D printed puzzles with the designs by Serhiy Grabarchuk beautifully recreated and presented. They are very favourably priced and well worth adding to your collection.

PuzzleMaster Kickstarter Part 2

Trick Bolt #4

Continuing the theme from last week, the PuzzleMaster Kickstarter campaign continues until end of December. Last week I described the 3 new puzzles that are the main feature but there are also 3 add-on puzzles that can be added to any order on the Kickstarter for a fraction of the cost on the PuzzleMaster site.

Starting with the Trick Bolt number 4 which is available as an add-on for just $8CAD compared with the $14.99 on their site. The aim is to remove the middle nut from the bolt. This is a lovely little challenge that is fun for any experienced puzzler as well as great for a beginner and children - it is rated as Tricky or level 6 on their 5 to 10 scale of difficulty. There are a couple of lovely little Aha! moments in it. This could probably be considered a rather basic sequential discovery puzzle. For $8 you really cannot go wrong. I will be taking this to work with me to encourage my colleagues to take up puzzling.

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Celestial Cipher

From the easy Trick Bolt 4 we move up a notch in difficulty. In fact we move right up to the top! The Celestial Cipher is an anodised metal 8 piece board burr. It is rather attractive in silver and gold. rather fiddly to play with due to the diminutive size - 4.5 x 2.9 x 4.7cm. PuzzleMaster rate this as a level 9 (Gruelling) on their odd scale and I personally would make it a level 10. The normal price for this one is $21.75CAD but as an add-on to the Kickstarter it is reduced to $16 - that is a steal!

The movement of the pieces is nice and smooth and you can see all the gaps and paths which should make it easier to dismantle but despite this, it is really quite a huge challenge with a good few blind alleys to go down. This one took me quite a few weeks to take apart - not for the fainthearted and only the very best burr-puzzler will manage to reassemble it without Burrtools. I needed BT and discovered that there are 12 possible assemblies raging from an "easy" level 19 (4.2.3.3.2.3.2) up to the hardest level 27 (10.5.3.3.2.3) which is the one that it arrived in. This potentially gives you a bunch of challenges if you can find someone to assemble it each time for you in a new challenge. Unfortunately Mrs S won't do that for me!

As a quick word of warning, don't let you cat lick this puzzle! Yes, I know that is an odd thing to write but my two kittens have a weird fascination with cold metal objects. They lick them all. taps/faucets, metal trivets and metal puzzles! Nothing I do will stop them licking everything which can give aa nasty surprise when you pick up something that is unexpectedly wet and sticky. 😱 The Celestial Cipher became a bit sticky to move and then the surface corroded. I have no idea what is in a cat's saliva that does that but don't let them do that to yours!

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Houdini's Torture Cell - PuzzleMaster version

If you don't have the Houdini's Torture Cell yet then this is a very good reason to join the Kickstarter and buy it for a very reasonable price of $36CAD (reduced from the usual $44.99). If you don't want the Kickstarter puzzles then you should buy this anyway - many of us would consider this an essential puzzle for anyone's collection. I did not get sent a copy of this because they know that I have an original version from Brian Young.

Brian collaborated with PuzzleMaster to recreate this amazing puzzle in metal and the result is stunning. I have payed with it at an MPP and it is good and solid with an amazing heft to it. The puzzling is identical to the wooden version and with a curved acrylic cage it shouldn't suffer from the same micro cracks that plagued the original. The puzzle was good enough to win the Jury first prize in the 2012 IPP design competition. That alone should tell you it is worth getting hold of. 

The mechanism is all on show and beautiful to work out (unlike the complete bugger of an identical blind challenge in the last lock of The Opening Bat. This reminds me that I should fetch out my copy to take to work again and bamboozle a whole new bunch of trainees, surgeons, ODPs and nurses. This is a simply wonderful puzzle!

You have just 16 days from the publication of this article to join the Kickstarter campaign. There are a bunch of great puzzles available and here I have shown that the add-ons are also worth considering.

PuzzleMaster Has An Opportunity For You

Crazy Lock designed by Christoph Lohe

I was contacted a few months ago by Leon Stein, one of the co-owners of PuzzleMaster, to ask whether I would be interested in looking at their upcoming Kickstarter campaign puzzles and would I show them off to the world? Well, I have some experience of the PuzzleMaster Kickstarter puzzles and have heartily recommended them each time. Of course, I agreed. I would be foolish to pass up the new creations and I thought that you, my readers, would want to see my opinion. The Kickstarter is now up and running with a close date of 31st December so if any of these interest you then get over there and place an order. They have reached the minimum to actually go ahead and so this will definitely be happening, with the aim of shipping puzzles to backers in June/July 2026.

This time there are 3 main puzzles in the campaign plus there are 3 add-on puzzles (ones already on the PuzzleMaster store) which can be added to your pledge to get a bit of a discount.

The first one I tried was the Crazy Lock. It's a burr in the shape of a lock - I can't resist burrs, I have a passing fondness for locks and a burr lock is irresistible to me - in fact I have quite a lot of them now. I wasn't disappointed and neither will you be - it is great.

The box states that it is level 8 on the PM 5 to 10 scale and I actually think it should be rated a bit higher at 9. I significantly struggled to dismantle it. The design was made by the late Christoph Lohe and was originally published as Burlock E. 

I have actually solved Burrlock E many many years ago when I bought it from Eric Fuller (he also adored Christoph's designs and always produced great challenges). Way back then I described it as a serious challenge for mere mortal puzzlers like me and it is still that. With a level of 26.2.3.2.2, this has a really significant difficulty to it. It took me about a week to dismantle it and then I was unable to assemble again without Burrtools. Creating the file was a bit of a challenge but at least I was finally able to put it back together again. For those of you who are burr assembly experts, there is an alternative assembly (level 26.3.3.2.2 which has the key hosizontally in the lock at the end. Double the challenge for one puzzle.

Burrlock E from Cubic Dissection (2017)

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Fortress of Shadows by Christoph Lohe

The next puzzle for me to play with was the Fortress of Shadows burr (also by Christoph) it is quite diminutive (1.75 x 1.25 x 1.25") but beautifully made with gold coloured burr pieces trapped inside a black anodised castle with 4 turrets. These turrets very much limited the movements of the pieces. I spent another 2 weeks working on this one. You can see everything that is going on inside but it is still a hugely difficult challenge with level 30.1.2 as the pieces move back and forth progressively making space to allow the first piece out. It looked familiar to me but I couldn't place it properly. I did go back and check my photo database and realised that Pelikan had produced a different version of the puzzle 5 years ago (called Castle) which I had reviewed here - that one had not been terribly difficult but this version is a significant advance in difficulty. 

I would be very impressed by anyone who could assemble it from scratch but I definitely needed a Burrtools file and this was a fun one to make and follow in reverse to fully assembled.

The original Castle by Christoph - similar but different to the Fortress of Shadows

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Twisted Logic by Yavuz Demirrhan

This rather beautiful 4 piece anodised burr looked very familiar to me and, as with all the other puzzles in my collection, I had a vague memory of owning it and solving it once but the process was a mystery to me. Looking back I realised that the original version was a puzzle I had actually solved twice. Chiasma was a design by the amazing Yavuz Demirrhan that PuzzleMaster had made before in a very limited run that I had reviewed back in 2020 and had compared the metal version with the original wooden one from Pelikan. In fact the handmade metal version is still available on the PuzzleMaster site but is not cheap. The newer one will be mass produced for a fraction of that cost.

I recalled that this one had been incredibly difficult. There are 4 identical board burrs that gradually extend apart and then sequentially line up the exit points to allow removal of pieces. I found it very confusing to work on and this is not made easier by the need to prevent the pieces rotating. I don't think there are any rotational shortcuts but it needs you to keep the pieces aligned to move them around safely. It's quite fun to explore but I would suggest that you use a back and forth approach to make sure that you know what you have done as it's easy to get lost. At one point I had the pieces quite extended apart from each other and in a dead end and struggled to return to the beginning. The rather low solution level of 16.4.6 would sort of imply that it shouldn't be too hard but don't be fooled - it is a huge challenge to move around, control the pieces and keep track. The solution is really not obvious. 

Chiasma - Pelikan version

Chiasma - original PM version

I will return next week with a review of the add-on puzzles from the Kickstarter campaign - this is definitely well worth inverting in. They are great challenges, beautifully made and an amazing price.