Above you can see how Alan decomposes a regular octahedron into octons. The recipe is the same as for the cubons and tetrons: Divide the edges of the octahedron in suitable ratios, connect the subdivision points to the face centers and the center of the octahedron. If you allow as subdivisions the proportions (1:2) and (2:1), there are six different octons that you can get this way.
Up to rotations, they can be used to assemble an octahedron in 10 different ways, as indicated above. A better representation of these solutions is shown below. The octahedron is represented by its skeletal graph, and each octon becomes a vertex with arrows pointing towards or away from the vertex, indicating what proportion the edge is to be divided in (2:1 or 1:2).
Equivalently, we can think of these six “small” octons as the six pillows I have discussed four years ago. So we can view the puzzle to assemble the six octons into an octahedron also as the puzzle to decorate the vertices of an octahedral graph with the six pillows so that the two arrow at each edge point the same way. More generally, one can ask to decorate any quartic graph this way, with any choice of the octons/pillows. Below is the graph of the cuboctahedron, with two sets of “coins” for decoration. This suggests a game for two players (gasp): Take turns to place the coins of your color, again so that arrows along each edge are pointing the same way. The player who moves last wins. Can you find a winning strategy for one of the two players?
The Inner Frame 