Introducing the Detour Box

A questioning beginning

Over the past year, I’ve been developing something that brings together several of my long-standing interests: woodworking, mechanical design, and the quiet delight that comes from an object revealing more than it first appears to.

Today I’m excited to share the first thoughts about the Detour Box — the inaugural puzzle box from Ludignum.

Where the idea came from

The idea began forming last summer during a puzzle-box workshop led by Kagen Sound at Anderson Ranch. A casual conversation with a classmate raised a question that stayed with me — not about mechanisms, but about how a puzzle can gently steer someone toward an assumption without ever insisting on it.

In the weeks that followed, I kept returning to that sensation. I even had a recurring dream at the time: I was trying to drive home, but every familiar road was closed, every turn rerouted, every path transformed into a detour. It wasn’t stressful — just quietly uncanny, the sense of being nudged off course again and again.

Detour grew out of that atmosphere and the idea that a puzzle could evoke that same moment of redirection — when your assumptions tilt, you notice what you missed, and everything suddenly makes sense.

What the Detour Box is (and isn’t)

Detour isn’t about difficulty. It’s a trick box, but not a cruel one. It invites a natural assumption — one that feels entirely reasonable — and then subverts it in a way that’s playful rather than punishing. The mechanism is straightforward; the challenge lies in noticing what matters.

When that moment arrives, the box opens with the quiet satisfaction of recognizing a pattern you weren’t quite seeing before.

A personal note

Working on Detour has been a steady companion this past year — part engineering exercise, part meditation, part puzzle in its own right. I’m still shaping it, and it’s shaping me a bit too. I’m looking forward to sharing more as the work continues.

— Peter

Ludignum