The Design Competition Guide (photos, instructions, and relevant notes) is available here.

1€ Labyrinth Puzzle

Designer: Robrecht Louage
Goal: Remove the coin.

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: 20€.

13 Triangles

Designer: Ed Pegg Jr
Goal: Place the 13 different triangles into the tray, using either an all-orthogonal or all-diagonal grid.

Purchase: Available at puzzlemist.com for $25.

3 Color Cube

Designer: Lucie Pauwels
Goal:

• Make a red cube.
• Make a yellow cube.
• Make a blue cube.

Notes: The cube is dissected into 24 pieces, in a way that the total surface area is three times the surface of the cube; so it is possible to make 3 different colored cubes with the pieces.

3H=6T

Designer: Hideki Tsuiki
Goal:

• Fit both types of pieces into the small box, (1/8 of the large box).
• Put all nine pieces into the large box.
• Put all nine pieces into the large box so that pieces meet face to face, edge to edge, and vertex to vertex, and there is no gap between pieces.

Notes: The two puzzle pieces H (Hexagonal Bipyramid) and T (Triangular Antiprismoid) are imaginary cubes, i.e., objects which have square projections in three orthogonal directions just as the cube. H and T also form a tiling of 3D space.

Purchase: Available from Kyoto University Museum Shop (http://imaginarycube.jimdo.com) or by .

3-Layer Tetraxis Array

Designer: Jane and John Kostick
Goal: Use the set of 61 sticks and blocks to put together seven compositions that symmetrically surround a center:

• Using one block and the 12 longest sticks
• Using the 12 blocks and the 12 mid-length sticks
• Using the 24 shortest sticks
• Combine 1 & 2
• Combine 1 & 3
• Combine 2 & 3
• Combine 1, 2 & 3

Purchase: Visit kosticks.com.

3x3x3 Cube with Chess Board Faces

Designer: Albert Gübeli
Goal: Assemble the six pieces using partial folding to build a 3x3x3 checkerboard cube.

Purchase: Available at www.albinegri.ch; price: $60.

Arrow Blocks

Designer: Goh Pit Khiam
Goal: Starting from the position shown, restore the dark arrow, and leave space so that the light arrowhead may be restored.

Notes: The puzzle resembles Bill Cutler's Slide-Blocked Sliding Block Puzzle, but is a completely different concept. Only when restarting the puzzle are you allowed to remove the cover of the frame and freely rearrange the pieces to the starting position (shown here).

Bare Bones

Designer: Steve Winter
Goal: Navigate the maze ball from the starting position at the entrance ring to the treasure position at the goal ring, and then back again.

Notes: Walls of a conventional 3D maze are replaced with rods. Many rods have been removed, and distracting rods added. A plastic case forms the outer walls so that the core of the maze becomes more visible.

Purchase: Available for $12.99 at Shapeways Ethereal Maze Puzzles. Use the "Send Message" link to inquire about custom orders.

Befuddling Butterfly

Designer: William Waite
Goal: Fit the 10 pieces into the tray. There are 231 different solutions.

Purchase: Available at www.puzzlemist.com.

Blind Burr

Designer: Gregory Benedetti
Goal: Disassemble and reassemble.

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: $90.

Bloom

Designer: Volker Latussek
Goal: Use the six petals to create a solid circle.

Purchase: Available at www.ahmes.de.

Bottle & Glass

Designer: Victor Lam & Kazakh Wong
Goal: Separate the bottle from the glass.

Purchase: Available at www.felixpuzzle.com , or contact the designer by . Price: $50.

Bubbloid122

Designer: Carl N. Hoff
Goal: After the puzzle is scrambled the goal is to restore each face of the puzzle to a single solid color.

Purchase: Many variations available at the HK Now Store.

BurrBlock

Designer: Jerry McFarland
Goal:

• Remove 4 key pieces (45 steps)
• Disassembly frame (15 steps)

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: $250.

Butterfly & Flowers

Designer: Shusong Lin
Goal: Open the box.

The "By George" Burr

Designer: George Syriaque
Goal: Disassemble and assemble six pieces to form a 6 piece burr-shaped puzzle.

Notes: Level 2.4.3.2.3 serially interlocking burr.

Purchase: Contact craftsman Brian Menold by or at Wood Wonders. May also be available at www.puzzlewood.de.

Caged Polycubes

Designer: John Rausch
Goal: Fill the cage with the three tetracubes (R,S,T) and four pentacubes (either A,L,N,Q or F,J,L,P).

Notes: Use the assembly jig to test out assemblies before trying to put them into the cage. With the 17 non-planar pentacubes and 3 non-planar tetracubes, there are 110 piece combinations with 259 ways to fill the cage after removal of reflections and rotations.

Purchase: Contact craftsman Tom Lensch by .

Catch 22

Designer: Kim Klobucher
Goal: Open the box.

Notes: After years of working with gravity pin designs, this is the result of what was initially considered a mistake, but was actually a great puzzle in disguise.

Purchase: Available at kcubedesigns.com, or contact the designer by .

Chamfered Cube

Designer: Jane and John Kostick
Goal: Use either set of 12 sticks to hold the 8 blocks in place at the corners of a cube. Add the other set of sticks to make a large chamfered cube, which is the shape of the small white block that can fit in the center of the arrangement.

Purchase: Visit kosticks.com.

Chaplin

Designer: Kohfuh Satoh
Goal: Arrange the pieces to make a shape of a bowler hat.

Clustered Anew

Designer: Scott Peterson
Goal: Disassemble, then re-assemble the six pieces to form a cluster arrangement of six rhombic dodecahedrons.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

COG-Cubed

Designer: Tom Longtin
Goal: Build an interlocking shape using several sets of a simple 3-piece puzzle.

Notes: COG-Cubed is made from eight sets of the familiar COG 3-piece burr, properly oriented and arranged in a 2 x 2 x 2 cubic array. The pieces are constructed in such a way that larger and more complex puzzles may be created.

Constrained Cube

Designer: Tom van der Zanden
Goal: First scramble the puzzle and then restore each face to a solid color by a sequence of face turns.

Notes: This puzzle is like a regular 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube, but on each face there is a little cogwheel that limits to what degree it can be turned. A face can be limited to turn only with 90 or 180 degrees of freedom, be free to turn a full 360 degrees or can even be blocked to not turn at all. By combining these variants many thousands of different puzzles can be made, some far harder than the original 3x3x3 cube.

Purchase: Visit designer's website (www.tomvanderzanden.nl) for more information on when this puzzle will be available.

Crazy Pentahedron

Designer: Bao Daqing
Goal: Scramble and restore.

Purchase: Visit twistypuzzles.com.

Double Duals

Designer: Jane and John Kostick
Goal: Make a pair of complementary arrangements such that each one contains blocks and 12 sticks symmetrically surrounding a center. Then put them together so that one is inside the other, and they both surround the block without magnets. Then repeat the entire process with each set of sticks making the opposite arrangement.

Purchase: Visit kosticks.com.

Double G

Designer: JinHoo Ahn
Goal: Separate the pieces, and restore the original shape.

Notes: No force required.

Double Symmetry

Designer: Tom Lee
Goal: Arrange the three pieces (one piece is already fixed to the base) to make two symmetric figures simultaneously.

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: $10.

Eyjafjallajökull-Puzzle

Designer: Vladimir Krasnoukhov
Goal: Make a symmetrical shape. Try to find both solutions, and it will become clear why the puzzle has this name.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Ferris' Box

Designer: Peter Wiltshire
Goal: Open the puzzle box.

Fidgety Rabbits

Designer: Namick Salakhov
Goal: Move all seven "rabbits" through the "gate" so that they can be removed from the device.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Gear Pyraminx

Designer: Timur Evbatyrov
Goal: Scramble the puzzle, then find a solution to restore the original shape and match colors on all faces.

Purchase: Mass-produced Gear Pyraminx are available at www.mefferts.com; price: $36.

Genie in the Bottle

Designer: Erhan Cubukcuoglu
Goal: Remove the bottle from the device.

Purchase: Visit puzzlerhan.wordpress.com or contact the designer by .

Guile in the Box

Designer: Scott Elliott
Goal: Put the four pieces inside and shut the lid flat.

Purchase: Puzzles built-to-order for $130; reduced price for test models. Contact the designer by or at mysd300.blogspot.com.

Heptagon 48

Designer: Koshi Arai
Goal: Fit the 2 sets of 6 tetrahepts (a total 48 heptagons) into the tray.

Notes: The regular heptagon can tile the plane if allowing for pentagonal space. This puzzle uses that tiling. A “tetrahept” is a figure made of four regular heptagons joined edge to edge. There are seven tetrahepts, but only six are compatible with this tiling.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Houdini's Torture Cell

Designer: Brian Young
Goal: Free Houdini from the Torture Cell.

Notes: You will discover some tools and must determine how to use them. Yes, there are lots of magnets in the puzzle but no hitting or banging is required to solve the puzzle.

IPP32WDC

Designer: Ken Irvine
Goal: Place the I, P, P, 3, 2, W, D, C pieces in the frame so that they are enclosed by the frame and locked in place by the final piece.

J Loops

Designer: Camille Xu
Goal: Remove the string from the wire.

Purchase: Available at www.felixpuzzle.com, or contact the designer by ; price: $10.

Just One More

Designer: Tom Lock
Goal: Place all 17 pieces into the square tray.

Little Game Hunter

Designer: Robert Yarger
Goal: Discover two hidden chambers by moving external puzzle pieces; then take apart the entire puzzle into individual pieces and re-assemble.

Little Window

Designer: Tom Jolly
Goal: Take apart, or put together. Both equally challenging.

Purchase: Visit www.jollygames.com.

Lock Device

Designer: Hiroshi Yamamoto
Goal: Arrange the five pieces on the flat table so that all the pieces are interlocked with no relative movement.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

The "Locked Room Mystery" Puzzle

Designer: Simon Nightingale
Goal: Open box with the key provided.

Lucy

Designer: Kelly Snache
Goal: Remove the free-floating lid.

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: $225 each.

Match the Eight Cubes

Designer: Gregory Benedetti
Goal: Construct eight cubes. Slight flexing of pieces is required.

Purchase: Available at Shapeways addictopuz.

The Matrix

Designer: Pantazis Houlis
Goal: Use the tubes to to arrange the four balls (each of different color) into their correct location.

Notes: The Matrix tubes represent two permutations and their inverses.

Purchase: Visit www.houlis.com or contact the designer by .

Mechanical Rings

Designer: Yuta Akira
Goal: Take apart, and put back together.

Notes: Inspired by Cast Coil.

Multidodecahedron

Designer: Tom van der Zanden
Goal: Scramble the puzzle and then restore each face to a solid color by a sequence of turns of the 12 faces.

Notes: This puzzle is comprised of two puzzles, where a smaller puzzle sits inside of a larger puzzle. A turn on the outside puzzle also affects the inner puzzle. Of course, both puzzles must be solved simultaneously. By varying the cut depths on a face-turning dodecahedron, different types of pieces appear and disappear. In this puzzle, that combines the piece sets from the Master Pentultimate and Megaminx puzzles, all pieces that can be created using just two cuts are present and must be solved.

Purchase: A DIY kit with plastic pieces is available at ShapewaysTom's Puzzles; price starting at $225. Fully assembled and finished copies are also available at www.tomvanderzanden.nl or from the designer by .

Nested Cubes

Designer: Tom Lensch
Goal: Arrange the nested cubes with lids so that they fit inside the largest box with the fixed brass rod. Each cube must be oriented so that the rod goes through one of its three holes.

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: $100.

New 3-4-5iamonds

Designer: Koshi Arai
Goal: Place the 20 pieces into either side of the tray. One side of the tray is a single-layer triangle; the other side is a double-layer diamond.

• Goal 1: It doesn't matter whether pieces are light or dark side up.
• Goal 2: Place all pieces dark-side up.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

One Circle - Two Circles

Designer: Diniar Namdarian
Goal: Arrange the marbles into groups of four with the same colors, and arrange the groups as indicated by the colored fragments of the top panel. The central circle allows for two different configurations: one with two distinct circles (each with 12 marbles), or a single closed loop with all 24 marbles.

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: 18€.

Pack-Man

Designer: Chris Enright
Goal: Fit the five pieces flat within the tray.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Peanut Gallery

Designer: Eric Harshbarger
Goal: Slide the pieces (without picking them up) so that they end up in the same arrangement as the start but where no two adjacent (touching) pieces have the same color. The start position is shown in the photo and on the bottom of the tray (identical line styles correspond to identical colors).

Purchase: Available from www.ericharshbarger.org; price: $25.

Pearson Puzzle Pieces

Designer: Randy Pearson
Goal: Construct a cube using the eight pieces.

Notes: Inspired by Stewart Coffin's Pieces-of-Eight.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Perplexing Palace Puzzle

Designer: James Dalgety and Martin & Brian Scoefield
Goal: The Queen, surrounded by her nine attendants, starts in the center of the palace. Take her out of the palace then return her and her attendants to their starting positions.

Purchase: Visit puzzlemuseum.com.

Prickly Burr 12

Designer: Peter Conrad
Goal: Disassemble and reassemble the 12-piece burr.

Notes: This puzzles explores the possibilities of rhombic dodecahedral geometry by reinventing the traditional burr. The pieces are made to interlock without moving outside the framework of the shape on which the puzzle depends.

Purchase: Contact the designer by ; price: $240.

Puzzle in a Puzzle Box

Designer: Thomas Beutner
Goal: Open the box, and assemble a pyramid-like stack of balls using all the pieces contained in the box.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Rat Box

Designer: Sam Cornwell
Goal: Open the box into four pieces, then re-assemble box.

Rattle Twist Duo

Designer: Osanori Yamamoto
Goal: Disassemble and reassemble the three pieces. Two options for the ring pieces are provided.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

ReCube

Designer: Viktor Genel
Goal:

• Take it apart into three pieces. This is only possible by moving all three parts at the same time.
• Put the puzzle back together. In order to do this the parts must be precisely positioned relative to each other. After that they will slide together with coordinated motion.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

RotoPrism 2

Designer: David Pitcher
Goal: Scramble the puzzle by making a few random twists on the three turning axes, then restore it to its original state with one color on each face, and all curved pieces in alignment with each other.

Notes: 180 degree turns are required unless an axis face shows 4-way symmetry, in which cae 90 degree turns are possible.

Purchase: Available at Shapeways Pitcher Puzzles.

Six Cushion Shot

Designer: Wayne Daniel
Goal: Pack 19 pieces in 4x4x4 plastic box.

Notes: This design is based on the cyclic path of a virtual particle bouncing around inside a cube.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Smartegg

Designer: Andras Zagyvai
Goal: Lead the stick from start (red) to finish (green), trough the spatial, multi layered, dynamic body.

Purchase: Visit www.smartegg.eu.

Square in the Bag

Designer: Iwahiro (Hirokazu Iwasawa)
Goal: Place the square completely inside the bag. No undue force is required.

Square Waltz

Designer: MINE (Mineyuki Uyematsu) with Kzy* (Kazuya Oiso)
Goal: Arrange the four triangular pyramid pieces (all faces are right-triangles) on the transparent glass stage to make:

• Orange square
• White square

Purchase: Available only in Japan at MINE * WEB-SHOP; price: 18,000¥.

StarHex II

Designer: Jacob Lettie, Kate Jones, Elijah Allen
Goal: Assemble the 17 polystar tiles so that the total length of common edges between tiles of the same color is minimized.

Purchase: Available at Kadon Enterprises or contact by ; price $35.

Tango in Nut

Designer: Namick Salakhov
Goal:

• Take the halved sliding screw with stair-like thread out of the halved sliding nut.
• Find the shortest path.

Notes: The extra piece is a tool to turn the screw when it cannot be grabbed.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Target in a Cube

Designer: Bertrand Michaut
Goal: Disassemble and reassemble the cube, while arranging the position of internal pieces.

Trapentrix

Designer: Timur Evbatyrov
Goal: Scramble the puzzle by making random turns on two turning axes, and find a solution to restore the original colors pattern.

Purchase: The DIY-kit is available at Shapeways shim's; the stickered version is available from designer by .

Triangle-Square-Pentagon

Designer: Emrehan Halici
Goal:

• Using three pieces, form an isosceles triangle.
• Using four pieces, form a square.
• Using all of the five pieces, form a regular pentagon

Tritalon

Designer: Iwahiro (Hirokazu Iwasawa)
Goal:

• Take out the coin.
• Put the coin back in place.

Purchase: Available from Wil Strijbos via ; price: 18€.

TriTangle

Designer: David Pitcher
Goal: Scramble the puzzle by making a few random turns on the three turning axes, then restore it to its original state with a single color on each face.

Purchase: Available at Shapeways Pitcher Puzzles.

Twisted Symmetry

Designer: Steve Winter
Goal: Navigate the ball from the entrance to the exit; or navigate from the exit to the entrance.

Notes: Walls of a conventional 3D maze are replaced with rods. Many rods have been removed, and distracting rods added. Also the outside frame has been altered to form symmetric designs.

Purchase: Available at Shapeways Ethereal Maze Puzzles; price: $16.99. Use the "Send Message" link to inquire about custom orders.

Varibyrinth

Designer: Rohit Kumar Singh
Goal: Slide the blocks to construct a maze that provides a continuous path for the ball to travel from start to finish.

Notes: Only when the maze is correctly constructed, will you be able to slide the switch on the back panel to release the ball into the maze.

The Vault

Designer: Mike Toulouzas
Goal: Open the vault, then close it.

Notes: Closing the vault is not just reversing the opening steps--a different mechanism prevents the door from being shut by accident!

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

W8-Variation

Designer: Donghoon Pee
Goal: Construct a shape that is the same shape as any of the eight individual pieces, just with twice the dimensions.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

Washington Skyline

Designer: William Waite
Goal:

• Arrange the pieces into one continuous loop so as to form an imaginary Washington DC skyline. Each piece contains part of a building.
• Find the three hidden US presidents' faces.

Purchase: Available at puzzlemist.com

With Luck or Effort

Designer: Ichiro Kohno
Goal: Get the wooden ball into the indentation at the end of the stick.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

W-Toast

Designer: Osanori Yamamoto
Goal: Assemble the four identical pieces inside the center of the board, making a 4x4x3 block.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .

XXXII

Designer: Sándor Bozóki
Goal: Balance all 32 sticks on the top of the stand.

Notes: XXXII is a variant of the nail balancing puzzle. However, sticks are without head and the top of the stand is not horizontal but peaked.

Purchase: Available at www.matches.hu or contact designer by .

Ze House of Mouse Ze Duong

Designer: Stephen Chin
Goal: Find Mousie hiding inside the house.

Purchase: Contact the designer by .