Jokinjiro

The original name, Jokinjiro, is a coined word, intended to sound Japanese; in Italian, the name suggests 'giochi in giro' which can be loosely translated as 'game of turns'. (This practice is reminiscent of another Italian puzzle, Tatami.)

The puzzle is the creation of Francesco Rotta, an engineer and lifelong puzzle developer. In 1995, he won an award for the abstract game, Oxxo. Currently, he develops puzzles for magazines and the iPhone.

The idea for the puzzle came when Francesco was looking at the pattern of tiles in a building. His gaze moved from tile to tile and he began to think about a mechanism based on the principle of stepping from panel to panel.

The puzzle looks simple enough, and the rules are not complex, but bi-directional versions can be very challenging.