The open source/weights models so far have proved that openAI doesn't have some special magic sauce. I m confident we ll soon have a model from Meta or others that s close to this level of reasoning. [Also consider that some of their top researchers have departed]

On a cursory look, it looks like the chain of thought is a long series of chains of thought balanced on each step, with a small backtracking added whenever a negative result occurs, sort of like solving a maze.