section_path: Writings/Surviving works/Ostomachion
section_name: Ostomachion
paragraph_text: Ostomachion
  
  Also known as Loculus of Archimedes or Archimedes' Box, this is a dissection puzzle similar to a Tangram, and the treatise describing it was found in more complete form in the Archimedes Palimpsest. Archimedes calculates the areas of the 14 pieces which can be assembled to form a square. Reviel Netz of Stanford University argued in 2003 that Archimedes was attempting to determine how many ways the pieces could be assembled into the shape of a square. Netz calculates that the pieces can be made into a square 17,152 ways. The number of arrangements is 536 when solutions that are equivalent by rotation and reflection are excluded. The puzzle represents an example of an early problem in combinatorics.
  
  The origin of the puzzle's name is unclear, and it has been suggested that it is taken from the Ancient Greek word for "throat" or "gullet", stomachos (στόμαχος). Ausonius calls the puzzle Ostomachion, a Greek compound word formed from the roots of osteon (ὀστέον, ' bone ') and machē (μάχη, ' fight ').