He adores games and puzzles of all sorts:  he plays them, creates them, and sometimes even publishes them. Oriel's quest in puzzle creation is discovering complexity hidden within simplicity. Bends puzzles are easy to explain and hard to solve, and they are a great example. The lore of NP-completeness has been a good source of ideas for problems with this property (three-coloring a planar map, for instance).

Oriel is a Software Architect professionally, working for Blackwell Consulting in Chicago, and the associated programming skills are also very useful in creating and solving puzzles. The best computer folks have a knack for abstraction and generalization and for conveying the complex in simple guise. Thus, Oriel enjoys a subtle interplay between his work, his training, and his quest as a puzzle developer. However, he says, "There’s always the possibility of rethinking what I want to be when I grow up as I fast approach my thirtieth birthday!"

He has been published by Penny Press Logic Problems, by Games Magazine, and by Kadon Enterprises. As an active member of Mensa, he runs a Logic Problem Tournament twice a year at two of the gatherings and has spoken several times on Game Theory.