This has been my go-to design since the 1980s but I never knew what it was called. Easy to build, consistently good flight characteristics. And you can slightly bend the "elevons" to get different flight patterns.

The Nakamura Lock - thank you for the name! - that's the one I learned when I was a child in Russia in early 1990's - I thought this was the default way to make an paper airplane.

Same. Yet another USSR thing that was apparently a ripoff :)

Oh wow, this is the standard (and only) type that all kids in Fiji learn how to make. I never knew the name.

> seeing it in a book as a child

Kids' Shenanigans by Klutz?

I saw the Nakamura Lock in a different Klutz book, titled "The Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes".

Sadly I don’t remember the title. It was a red boarder around white in a paperback book. I had it for awhile as an adult but I’m not sure if it survived my last move.

How do you find the exact dimensions for your Nakamura Lock? I have to estimate some of the critical dimensions, so it's always a surprise whether each plane will pitch too far upwards or downwards.

I've always just eyeballed it and it works out. It seems like a pretty forgiving design.

Same. Taught my kids to make it, too, and they are always confused as to why everyone doesn't make them this way at school.

  > I messed with tons of "world record distance" designs as a kid

In seventh or right grade we had a paper airplane contest. I literally walked up to the throwing line holding an unfolded piece of paper. At the line I crumbled it up, it flew straighter and faster then any other airplane thrown that day, and I think only one or two airplanes beat it for distance. My appeal at being disqualified was rejected, though I broke no rules.

There was once a bridge-building competition, with provided materials, and scores for it bearing different weight toy cars, for height and for length. Nowhere was it said the bridge had to bear any of the cars. Our 15-metre long roll of tape bridge with three-pop-stick-A-frame supports, which scored three times as much as the next, was unceremoniously disqualified for unspecified grounds, as I had expected. I pressed for a few days for the grounds (even suggesting the couple of not-unreasonable grounds I had thought of, such as that our team had schismed into two over the creative direction), but was not given them.

The unwritten rules about spirit can be applied capriciously.

I think ours was still the most popular bridge. And honestly one of the more realistic.

When my daughter and niece were 11 and 9, we had a paper airplane folding afternoon. We went through the handful of designs I remembered from middle school with some level of success. All along, I was teasing them about a super plane I knew how to make.I eventually made it and it flew so much better than all the other ones… but they hated me for it.

It turned out that they wanted paper planes that conformed to their idea of a paper plane, not paper-based engineering marvels.

Apparently, that design is called "two loops".