Professor Layton "puzzle master" Akira Tago passes away at 90

Akira Tago, the puzzle designer behind the Professor Layton series, passed away on 6th March at 90 after falling victim to interstitial pneumonia.

Prior to his work on Professor Layton, where he is credited as a "puzzle master", Tago was a psychologist and wrote a series of best-selling quiz books called Atama no Taisō. Debuting in 1966, the puzzle book sold more than 2.65m copies, according to Japan Times. It went on to launch 22 sequels with the series shifting over 12m copies.

When not designing puzzles for commercial use, Tago was an academic. He became a professor of Chiba University in 1973 and eventually rose to chairman of the Japan Creativity Society and president of Tokyo Future University.

He will be missed.