Long ago, Nate made an iPhone note called “what makes a good puzzle.” This was after working on the Jack Puzzle and Venn Puzzle at Craighill. At the time, we were just starting to work on the Tetra puzzle.

That note listed ten fundamentals of good puzzle design and helped make the Tetra puzzle great (in our opinion). The list defines shape, difficulty, story and many other concepts. It’s gone through some edits and we’ve found ways to bend some rules and break others. We still largely follow the same guidance on every puzzle we design.

In 2024 Damein and I founded Curio to share our joy of designing and making astounding mechanical puzzles.