ConwayLife.com

Posted: **December 31st, 2019, 1:05 am**

Every pattern found in a year matching the regex /201[0-9]/ is allowed.

Use the same rules as POTY 2019. Any pattern in the first 3 ranks of any POTY this decade is automatically nominated.

Posted: **December 31st, 2019, 1:18 am**

Again, I think we should put this off until the Pattern of the Year 2019 competition is concluded.

Posted: **December 31st, 2019, 1:20 am**

Okay so I have a question: when do nominations end for these competitions? (POTY, POTD, OCADOTY)

It's important to note that if all three top-3 entries are automatically nominated for POTD, then we should wait for POTY 2019 to finish so we know what those are.

Posted: **December 31st, 2019, 9:55 am**

Here are my nominations again:

Moosey wrote: ↑
December 30th, 2019, 10:52 am
I nominate all the POTY winners from past years to POTD, in particular, Sir Robin.

I also nominate David Hilbert for POTD

Should anyone happen to discover a new elementary spaceship within the next 33 hours and 1 minute, (time of writing: 14:59 UTC) I nominate that too

As it happens, Scholar was discovered within that timeframe, (and happened to be given a name I suggested), so I nominate that as the second elementary 2c/7 in over 19 years.

Posted: **January 1st, 2020, 8:23 pm**

Maybe we should hold a vote for POTM (years 1000-1999). Not to be confused with POTM (2019-12-01 - 2019-12-31). (Or POTM (2019-12-30)?)

Posted: **January 2nd, 2020, 11:56 am**

I propose as a candidate the waterbear.

Posted: **January 2nd, 2020, 12:11 pm**

blah wrote: ↑
January 1st, 2020, 8:23 pm
Maybe we should hold a vote for POTM (years 1000-1999). Not to be confused with POTM (2019-12-01 - 2019-12-31). (Or POTM (2019-12-30)?)

It would certainly be a discovery to find that CGoL existed before 1971, that's for sure.

Posted: **January 3rd, 2020, 10:29 am**

Ch91 wrote: ↑
January 2nd, 2020, 12:11 pm

blah wrote: ↑
January 1st, 2020, 8:23 pm
Maybe we should hold a vote for POTM (years 1000-1999). Not to be confused with POTM (2019-12-01 - 2019-12-31). (Or POTM (2019-12-30)?)
It would certainly be a discovery to find that CGoL existed before 1971, that's for sure.

But it wouldn't be a discovery at all, just a surprise of infinite improbability, to find that John Conway, currently professor emeritus at Princeton university, existed before 1937. That's for certain!

: John H. Conway FRS (born 26 December 1937); 20200103_150309.jpg (178.48 KiB) Viewed 9861 times

Posted: **January 5th, 2020, 1:57 pm**

Since I still haven't gotten an answer about how the 2019 patterns to be nominated to POTD will be determined (again, this really should be happening after POTY is completed), I guess I'll be nominating David Hilbert and the spider synthesis manually. I'm pretty sure those two will be in the top 3, though I don't know what the other one will be.

Posted: **January 6th, 2020, 11:00 am**

Ian07 wrote: ↑
January 5th, 2020, 1:57 pm
Since I still haven't gotten an answer about how the 2019 patterns to be nominated to POTD will be determined (again, this really should be happening after POTY is completed), I guess I'll be nominating David Hilbert and the spider synthesis manually. I'm pretty sure those two will be in the top 3, though I don't know what the other one will be.

WOW! The David Hilbert aka p23 is just as boring as it might have already been when the early roman catholics slaughtered the renowned and respected librarian Hypatia of Alexandria, burned down her library and expelled the bourgois hebrew inhabitants of the ancient greeks capital because they couldn't distinguish a temple from a synagogue.

But the spider synthesis is by far the most exciting intelligent design I became aware of ever since I joined this digital forum of Conway fans, addicts and enthusiasts a fortnight ago.

Extrementhusiast wrote: ↑
March 7th, 2019, 11:35 pm
Is it time to drop the nuke? I think it's time to drop the nuke. The USA is otherwise considering a ground invasion of Japan, which would have an estimated cost of two million casualties—wait, this is Conway's Game of Life, not real life!

Dear Extrementhusiast!
Are you aware that Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, Sodom and Ghomorra of the atomic ages, happened hardly three quarters of a century ago in 1945 due to the extraordinary mathematical skills of
J. Robert Oppenheimer?

: No comment; 20200106_155653.png (245.37 KiB) Viewed 9737 times

Posted: **January 6th, 2020, 11:27 pm**

Please stop posting these rambles and large images that do not contribute to discussion, as these images slow down loading of the page greatly due to their excessive size.

Posted: **January 7th, 2020, 12:04 am**

blah wrote: ↑
January 1st, 2020, 8:23 pm
Maybe we should hold a vote for POTM (years 1000-1999). Not to be confused with POTM (2019-12-01 - 2019-12-31). (Or POTM (2019-12-30)?)

No way! I just won the Pattern of the Minute Award for 7 January 2020, 04:03 UTC!

Code: Select all

x = 13, y = 5, rule = B3/S23
obob3obobobo$obobobobobobo$3ob3ob3obo$2bobobo3bo$3obobob3obo!

Posted: **January 7th, 2020, 12:20 am**

Things are getting a bit too off-topic here, and I think it's difficult to nominate patterns when we don't yet know what will win the PotY 2019 competition. I have decided to lock this topic for now. I will unlock it when the PotY 2019 competition concludes.

Posted: **March 16th, 2020, 8:08 am**

With the completion of the 2019 Pattern of the Year competition, it is now time to unlock this topic.

As already stated, the first 3 ranks from each Pattern of the Year competition are automatically nominated (not including 2012, since no votes were cast). I think this is a reasonable starting place. However, there are certainly a few other patterns that deserve to be nominated. I have two specific nominations:

Spaghetti monster: the first 3c/7 orthogonal spaceship to be discovered. It's discovery required significant improvement to search techniques by Tim Coe.
Merzenich's p31: the first p31 oscillator. This represents one of only four new oscillator periods found in the last ten years.

I think we somehow need to include the still life and spaceship syntheses that have been found over the decade. Syntheses tend to build off each other, so they are significant as a collection. For Pattern of the Year competitions we have often included these by nominating related synthesis collections. What could be done to include these in the Pattern of the Decade competition? Is there a fair way to nominate them?

If anyone has any other nominations, please share them. Almost certainly, any nominee would come from the previous Pattern of the Year nominees.

Posted: **March 16th, 2020, 9:29 am**

I know I initially said I wasn't going to nominate these, but since we're automatically including the top 3 from each year I felt it wouldn't be fair to exclude them just because a vote was never held for 2012:

Statorless p3: the first volatility-1 p3 oscillator found.
37P4H1V0: smallest c/4 orthogonal spaceship known.

(P.S. don't forget about OCADOTY 2019)

Posted: **July 21st, 2020, 8:00 pm**

I have temporarily locked the new voting thread so that we may finalize the nominees, rules, and time-frame for this competition. I am including here the current (unedited) list of nominees from the voting thread:

1) David Hilbert, the first discovered p23 oscillator, by Luka Okanishi and Aidan F. Pierce
2) The spider synthesis, the first synthesis of a c/5 orthogonal spaceship, by Martin Grant, Goldtiger997 and Tanner Jacobi
3) The scholar, the second 2c/7 diagonal spaceship, by Andrew J. Wade
4) Sir Robin, the first elementary oblique spaceship and the fastest possible knightship with a catalogue of tagalongs, by Adam P. Goucher, Tomas Rokicki and Josh Ball
5) The 0E0P metacell, a unit cell that is completely empty in the OFF phase, and the largest unit cell so far, by Adam P. Goucher
6) The reverse caber-tosser, a method to synthesise any glider-synthesisable object in just 32 gliders, by Adam P. Goucher, Dave Greene and Chris Cain
7) The 2-engine Cordership, the Cordership with the least amount of engines and a disproof of the hypothesis that 3 engines are required for a Cordership, by Aidan F. Pierce
8) Tanner's p46, a sparky period-46 oscillator that can be used to construct guns, by Tanner Jacobi
9) Stable pulse dividers (the tremi-Snark, quadri-Snark and semi-cenarks), useful for optimising glider and other spaceship guns, by Tanner Jacobi
10) The Caterloopillars, a family of fast adjustable orthogonal macro-spaceships going up to c/4, by David Bell, Alexey Nigin and Michael Simkin
11) The copperhead, the first c/10 orthogonal spaceship and a bite-sized one, and the fireship, a pseudo-tagalong that allows for complex c/10 orthogonal circuitry, by zdr and Simon Ekström
12) The grandfatherless pattern, the solution of a conjecture posed by John H. Conway which has 17920 non-trivial parents, all Gardens of Eden, by mtve
13) The syringe, a small speedy versatile G-to-H converter that simplified the majority of Herschel loops and glider guns with a H-to-G and a few Snarks, by Tanner Jacobi
14) The Simkin glider gun, the smallest glider gun in its double-barreled form, by Michael Simkin
15) The Demonoids, diagonal versions of Gemini and the smallest self-constructing/supporting spaceships by population, by Chris Cain, Dave Greene and Dongook Lee
16) The waterbear, the first "fast" oblique spaceship constructed, travelling at the speed of (23,5)c/79, and the smallest self-constructing/supporting spaceship by bounding box, by Brett Berger and Ivan Formichev
17) The centipede, the first 31c/240 orthogonal spaceship which shares much of its circuitry with the shield bug, by Chris Cain
18) The half-baked knightships, including the Parallel HBK, the first family of adjustable-velocity fixed-slope spaceships and the first class of macro-spaceships not based on Gemini, by Ivan Formichev, Chris Cain, Dave Greene and Adam P. Goucher
19) The Snark, a bite-sized 90-degree CP glider reflector that made all sorts of oscillators and guns possible and tightened up Herschel loops, by Mike Playle
20) The loafer, the first c/7 orthogonal spaceship and at 20 cells the smallest non-terminal velocity spaceship, by Josh Ball
21) The CC semi-Snark, a compact period doubler and a CC 90-degree 2G-to-G reflector, by Sergey Petrov
22) The linear propagator, arguably the first example of a replicator constructed, by Dave Greene
23) The fully universal Turing machine, an extension of the universal Turing machine that is capable of simulating itself, by Paul Rendell
24) The lobster, the first c/7 diagonal spaceship as well as an infinitely-extensible one, by Matthias Merzenich
25) Garden of Eden 6, a rotationally symmetric Garden of Eden, by Marjin Heule, Christiaan Hartman, Kees Kwekkeboom and Alain Noels
26) Gemini, the first oblique spaceship constructed, an ibisship in its original form, with adjustable velocity and displacement, by Andrew J. Wade
27) The pi calculator, a pattern that prints out the digits of pi via a binary algorithm and its simpler variant, the phi calculator, by Adam P. Goucher
28) The c/5 diagonal rakes, a circuit that catalyses gliders into two while moving at c/5 diagonal with variable periods, by Matthias Merzenich
29) The spaghetti monster, the first and only 3c/7 orthogonal spaceship that can support a 3c/7o wave, by Tim Coe
30) Merzenich's p31, the first and smallest period-31 oscillator capable of reflecting gliders 90 degrees, by Matthias Merzenich
31) The statorless p3, the first volatility-1 period-3 oscillator, by Jason Summers
32) 37P4H1V0, the smallest c/4 orthogonal spaceship, by Josh Ball

Posted: **July 21st, 2020, 9:30 pm**

I have a few immediate comments.

I think it is essential that we nominate the still life and spaceship syntheses found over the decade. I am of the opinion that the small still life syntheses could be nominated as a single collection. This includes syntheses of all still lifes up to 18 bits, and cheap (less than one glider per bit) syntheses of all still lifes up to 17 bits.

I'm not sure if the spaceship syntheses should be combined into a single entry. One issue is that the spider synthesis automatically has its own entry as one of the top 3 from the 2019 Pattern of the Year competition.
The reverse caber tosser entry should use 35 gliders, not 32, as this was the state of the art at the end of the decade.
We could combine some subsequent discoveries into already-nominated categories (e.g., add the quinti-Snark to the stable pulse dividers entry). Does anyone agree with this? The way I see it, in the pattern of the decade competition patterns no longer need to be grouped by the year they were discovered.

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 3:01 am**

I want to get the voting thread back up and running, because bubblegum worked hard at it and we have waited a long time for it.

By the way, if anyone opposes my... intervention, and just wants me to start up the contest again without changes, please feel free to comment. I'm wielding my moderator power a bit heavy-handed here, which I don't really like to do.

I propose the following nominees:

Still life syntheses: syntheses of all still lifes up to 18 bits, with all still lifes up to 17 bits synthesized with less than one glider per bit (Martin Grant, Mark Niemiec, Tanner Jacobi, Chris Cain, Goldtiger997, Jeremy Tan, et al.)
Small spaceship syntheses: syntheses of a variety of small spaceships, representing a significant advancement in glider synthesis technology (Martin Grant, Tanner Jacobi, Aidan F. Pierce, Adam P. Goucher, Goldtiger997, et al.)

I also propose that we add the statorless p5 to the statorless p3 entry. I would want to add the CC semi-Snark to the pulse-divider entry, but since it was in the top 3 for its year, it automatically gets its own entry. I realize now that the quinti-Snark doesn't fit with the stable pulse dividers.

Some corrections to and comments on the current entries:

Ivan Fomichev's name is misspelled.
Scholar is an orthogonal spaceship, not a diagonal spaceship. Further, it is the second elementary 2c/7 ship, but not the second overall.
The note about the size of the OE0P metacell seems unnecessary, since I don't think large size is considered a desirable quality in this case.
As noted before, the cost of the reverse caber-tosser should be 35 gliders, not 32.
The 2-engine Cordership entry should specify that it is the least known number of switch engines for a Cordership.
Regarding Tanner's p46, I would include the fact that it can be used to construct gliderless LWSS and MWSS guns.
Regarding the syringe, I would remove the mention of the H-to-G and Snarks.
I think Garden of Eden 6 is still the only known Garden of Eden to fit inside a 10x10 bounding box. Is this true?
Spaghetti monster is the first and only known elementary 3c/7.

I have a few opinions on rewording some of the descriptions to be a bit more clear, and I prefer the format we've been using for the list for the last few PotY competitions. Here is how I think the updated list should look:

#01 David Hilbert: the first discovered p23 oscillator (by Luka Okanishi and Aidan F. Pierce)
#02 spider synthesis: the first synthesis of a c/5 orthogonal spaceship (by Martin Grant, Goldtiger997 and Tanner Jacobi)
#03 scholar: the second elementary 2c/7 orthogonal spaceship (by Andrew J. Wade)
#04 Sir Robin: the first elementary oblique spaceship and the fastest possible knightship with a catalogue of tagalongs (by Adam P. Goucher, Tomas Rokicki and Josh Ball)
#05 0E0P metacell: a unit cell that is completely empty in the OFF phase (by Adam P. Goucher)
#06 reverse caber-tosser: a method to synthesise any glider-synthesisable object in just 35 gliders (by Adam P. Goucher, Dave Greene and Chris Cain)
#07 2-engine Cordership: the Cordership with the least known amount of engines and a disproof of the hypothesis that 3 engines are required for a Cordership (by Aidan F. Pierce)
#08 Tanner's p46: a sparky period-46 oscillator that can be used to construct guns, including gliderless LWSS and MWSS guns (by Tanner Jacobi)
#09 Stable pulse dividers (the tremi-Snark, quadri-Snark and semi-cenarks): useful for optimising glider and other spaceship guns (by Tanner Jacobi)
#10 Caterloopillars: a family of fast adjustable orthogonal macro-spaceships travelling at speeds up to c/4 (by David Bell, Alexey Nigin and Michael Simkin)
#11 copperhead and fireship: the first c/10 orthogonal spaceship and a bite-sized one, along with a pseudo-tagalong that allows for complex c/10 orthogonal circuitry (by zdr and Simon Ekström)
#12 grandfatherless pattern: A pattern all of whose 17920 non-trivial parents are Gardens of Eden. It is a solution to a conjecture posed by John H. Conway (by mtve)
#13 syringe: a small speedy versatile G-to-H converter that simplified the majority of Herschel loops and glider guns (by Tanner Jacobi)
#14 Simkin glider gun: in its double-barreled form this is the smallest known gun (Michael Simkin)
#15 Demonoids: diagonal versions of Gemini and the smallest self-constructing/supporting spaceships by population (by Chris Cain, Dave Greene and Dongook Lee)
#16 waterbear: the first "fast" oblique spaceship constructed, travelling at the speed of (23,5)c/79, and the smallest self-constructing/supporting spaceship by bounding box (by Brett Berger and Ivan Fomichev)
#17 centipede: the first 31c/240 orthogonal spaceship. It shares much of its circuitry with the shield bug (by Chris Cain)
#18 half-baked knightships, including the Parallel HBK: the first family of adjustable-velocity fixed-slope spaceships and the first class of macro-spaceships not based on Gemini (by Ivan Fomichev, Chris Cain, Dave Greene and Adam P. Goucher)
#19 Snark: a bite-sized 90-degree CP glider reflector that made all sorts of oscillators and guns possible and tightened up Herschel loops (by Mike Playle)
#20 loafer: the first c/7 orthogonal spaceship and at 20 cells the smallest non-terminal velocity spaceship (by Josh Ball)
#21 CC semi-Snark: a compact period doubler and a CC 90-degree 2G-to-G reflector (by Sergey Petrov)
#22 linear propagator: arguably the first example of a replicator to be constructed (by Dave Greene)
#23 fully universal Turing machine: an extension of the universal Turing machine that is capable of simulating itself (by Paul Rendell)
#24 lobster: the first c/7 diagonal spaceship. It is infinitely extensible. (by Matthias Merzenich)
#25 Garden of Eden 6: a rotationally symmetric Garden of Eden. It is the only known Garden of Eden to fit inside a 10x10 bounding box (by Marjin Heule, Christiaan Hartman, Kees Kwekkeboom and Alain Noels)
#26 Gemini: the first oblique spaceship constructed, an ibisship in its original form, with adjustable velocity and displacement (Andrew J. Wade)
#27 pi calculator and phi calculator: patterns that prints out the digits of pi and phi via a binary algorithm (by Adam P. Goucher)
#28 c/5 diagonal rakes: a circuit that catalyses gliders into two while moving at c/5 diagonal with variable periods (by Matthias Merzenich)
#29 spaghetti monster: the first and only elementary 3c/7 orthogonal spaceship. It can support a period-28 wave (by Tim Coe)
#30 Merzenich's p31: the first and smallest period-31 oscillator. It is capable of reflecting gliders 90 degrees (by Matthias Merzenich)
#31 statorless p3 and statorless p5: the first volatility-1 oscillators of periods 3 and 5 (by Jason Summers and Josh Ball)
#32 37P4H1V0: the smallest known c/4 orthogonal spaceship (by Josh Ball)
#33 Still life syntheses: syntheses of all still lifes up to 18 bits, with all still lifes up to 17 bits synthesized with less than one glider per bit (Martin Grant, Mark Niemiec, Tanner Jacobi, Chris Cain, Goldtiger997, Jeremy Tan, et al.)
#34 Small spaceship syntheses: syntheses of a variety of small spaceships, representing a significant advancement in glider synthesis technology (by Martin Grant, Tanner Jacobi, Aidan F. Pierce, Adam P. Goucher, Goldtiger997, et al.)

Finally, we need to decide how long to allow for voting. We typically give it two or three weeks for the Pattern of the Year competitions.

Again, I would appreciate some feedback on this, as I don't want to delay the contest any further. I especially want to know if anyone objects to my two latest nominees.

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 3:27 am**

May I sneak Naszvadi's new smallest c/5 puffer in?

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 5:16 am**

Hunting wrote: ↑
July 23rd, 2020, 3:27 am
May I sneak Naszvadi's new smallest c/5 puffer in?

This competition covers the years 2010 through 2019. That puffer was found in 2020, so it does not qualify for this competition. However, it certainly qualifies for the next Pattern of the Year competition.

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 5:16 am**

Sokwe wrote: ↑
July 23rd, 2020, 5:16 am

Hunting wrote: ↑
July 23rd, 2020, 3:27 am
May I sneak Naszvadi's new smallest c/5 puffer in?
This competition covers the years 2010 through 2019. That puffer was found in 2020, so it does not qualify for this competition. However, it certainly qualifies for the next Pattern of the Year competition.

Oh, okay.

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 6:27 am**

Sokwe wrote: ↑
July 23rd, 2020, 3:01 am
I want to get the voting thread back up and running, because bubblegum worked hard at it and we have waited a long time for it.
...
Again, I would appreciate some feedback on this, as I don't want to delay the contest any further. I especially want to know if anyone objects to my two latest nominees.

No objections here -- but then, I did something similarly heavy-handed on the last voting cycle. It seems like somebody has to do a really careful read-through and review in advance of votes like this, so thank you very much for stepping in!

You've fixed all the problems that I noticed with the original list, and added only items that I might want to vote for... so if there are other mistakes, somebody had better speak up about them quick. All I can see is a stray 'a' at the end of #15, but I'm going to go ahead and use my heavy-handed moderator powers to make that disappear right now.

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 7:14 am**

Sokwe wrote: ↑
July 23rd, 2020, 3:01 am
syntheses of all still lifes up to 18 bits

should read '19 bits': https://catagolue.appspot.com/census/b3 ... costs/xs19

(Martin Grant, Mark Niemiec, Tanner Jacobi, Chris Cain, Goldtiger997, Jeremy Tan, et al.)

I think Alex Greason needs to be added to that list.

I also propose that we add the statorless p5 to the statorless p3 entry. I would want to add the CC semi-Snark to the pulse-divider entry, but since it was in the top 3 for its year, it automatically gets its own entry. I realize now that the quinti-Snark doesn't fit with the stable pulse dividers.

Hmm, yes, I really like these "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" meta-entries (such as the glider syntheses) -- it helps to make POTD (Patterns of the Decade?) overlap less with POTY. In that vein, I'd suggest "single-channel universal construction" as an entry: after all, the Snark, syringe, and universal 90-tick-recovery recipes were discovered this decade, as well as slmake and various constructions dependent upon it. So this entry actually makes sense for POTD but not for POTY (because it's a collection of discoveries that spanned many years).

Posted: **July 23rd, 2020, 10:20 am**

calcyman wrote: ↑
July 23rd, 2020, 7:14 am
should read '19 bits': https://catagolue.appspot.com/census/b3 ... costs/xs19

This was also not completed until February 2020: viewtopic.php?p=89061#p89061

Posted: **July 28th, 2020, 7:47 am**

calcyman wrote: ↑
July 23rd, 2020, 7:14 am
I'd suggest "single-channel universal construction" as an entry

Can someone with more knowledge of this entry and its uses (and its discoverers) provide a description for it?

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