To start, here’s a list of the nominees with a short description attached to each of them.
NOTE: For nominations of multiple related items, the links below are representative samples only. If you can't find all the details of the nomination in a given link, look up the nomination number in this comprehensive summary post or in this wiki table.
- #01 74P34: The first known non-trivial oscillator with period 34. (by Mitchell Riley)
- #02 Raucci's p38: The first known oscillator with period 38, made by adding copies of cvojan's traffic stop as fenceposts for a known wick by Jason Summers. (by David Raucci, Jason Summers, and cvojan)
- #03 Unsynthesizable and limited-ancestor objects: These discoveries include an unsynthesizable still life and unsynthesizable p2 oscillator, both based on "self-forcing" agars, a generalized solution to the grandfather problem (patterns that have n-tick predecessors but no (n+1)-tick predecessors), and American Dream, a finite pattern with an infinite-population predecessor but no finite-population predecessor. (by Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo)
- #04 Record lifespan puffer-based methuselahs: This series of patterns with relatively small bounding boxes and initial populations set several new records for methuselah longevity. Ordinarily patterns that include switch-engine outputs will produce unbounded linear growth and are not counted in the "methuselah" category, but these examples generate a lucky retrograde glider that shuts down the receding switch engines after thousands or millions of generations. (by yaochen2, dani, and gravity)
- #05 Explicit 15-glider reverse caber tosser: A concrete construction demonstrating that any glider synthesis can be reduced to use just 15 gliders. The number of gliders was also reduced from its previous value of 17. (by Daniel Vargas, Adam P. Goucher, Pavel Grankovskiy, Simon Ekström, Dave Greene, AlbertArmStain, Oscar Cunningham, Chris Cain, dani, and Goldtiger997)
- #06 Five new p23 engines: At the end of 2021, only one period-23 oscillator was known, excluding variants: David Hilbert. As of the end of 2022, there are six. (by Nico Brown, James Pascua, and Mitchell Riley)
- #07 The Great Oscillator Discovery Project: This project continued 2022's increased focus on the discovery of new oscillators, partially to work toward filling in the remaining unknown oscillator periods to finally prove Life to be omniperiodic. Several new automated and semi-automated search techniques were introduced, resulting in a flood of new discoveries. For example, the introduction of symmetric CatForce has led to new oscillators of approximately 112 periods, including fifteen primes above 13. (by David Raucci, Mitchell Riley, Luke Kiernan, iNoMed, et al.)
- #08 Engineered diehards: A series of diehard patterns with increasingly long lifespans, culminating in the discovery of a pattern that starts in a bounding box of area 9990, and yet lives for more than 10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10 generations before dying out completely. (by Dean Hickerson, Pavel Grankovskiy, toroidalet, and Tanner Jacobi)
- #09 Quartermax: A long sought-after pattern that fills one quarter of the Life plane with zebra stripes. (by Keith Amling, Hartmut Holzwart, and Jason Summers)
- #10 Gliderless Gosper glider gun breeder: A p48 puffer for Gosper glider guns that produces its output in a very unconventional way, with no glider collisions. (by Wojciech Kęsy)
- #11 New quadratic growth records: The smallest known quadratic growth patterns in terms of population, number of gliders, and bounding box -- 20-cell quadratic growth, 6G quadratic growth, and 23×13 quadratic growth. (by dani, Luka Okanishi, and Rocknlol)
- #12 Self-synthesizing glide-reflecting loopship: A pattern made entirely of gliders that synthesises a reflected and translated copy of itself. Thus it is an orthogonal spaceship travelling at a speed of 30985960c/144171206. (by Goldtiger997)
- #13 Speed Orthogonoid: An adjustable spaceship capable at travelling orthogonally at any speed less than c/2. (by Goldtiger997)
- #14 Speed Orthogonal Loopship: A pattern made entirely of XWSSes that synthesises a reflected and translated copy of itself. It travels orthogonally and is adjustable so that its speed can become arbitrarily close to c/2. Its population is much less than that of the Speed Orthogonoid. (by Goldtiger997)
- #15 Nico Brown's strictly volatile oscillators: Nico Brown created a script that can create huge strictly volatile oscillators of any period 943+ except 944. (by Nico Brown)
- #16 Taco: The third known elementary c/7 orthogonal spaceship. (by Frank Everdij)
- #17 New honeyfarm catalysts: Catalysts which perform new perturbations on honey farms. In particular the chucklebait, which has found considerable use in honey farm hasslers of various periods. (by Mitchell Riley and Luke Kiernan)
- #18 Component for adding a "crotchet" to a c/3 spaceship: This is a new synthesis component that can repeatably extend a "waltz" section of c/3 orthogonal spaceship, allowing for the first known infinite series of synthesizable c/3 spaceships. (by Goldtiger997)
- #19 Small Max predcessors: After an intermediate 127-cell, 27 × 23 new record set by iNoMed, Rocknlol found two different record predecessors of a Max spacefiller variant by population and bounding box of 112 cells and 21 × 21, respectively. (by iNoMed and Rocknlol)
- #20 Strictly volatile p86 R-pentomino hassler: The discovery of this oscillator added 86 to a fairly short list, making it the fourteenth period where a strictly volatile oscillator is known that doesn't make use of self-constructing circuitry. (by Nico Brown and iNoMed)
- #21 New spaceship syntheses: Glider construction recipes were discovered for Orion 2, 33P4H1V1, 70P5H2V0, 58P8H4V0, 30P3H1V0, 29P3H1V0, Brain, 66P5H2V0, and 37P4H1V1, as well as a method for adding a component to existing c/3 spaceships. (by Goldtiger997, Mark Niemiec, iNoMed, Tanner Jacobi, pipsqueek, and Connor Steppie)
- #22 New reflector periods: 90° reflectors for the previously unsolved periods of 23, 34, and 38. (by vivi, iNoMed, Matthias Merzenich, David Raucci, Mitchell Riley, MAP bot, Nico Brown, Tanner Jacobi, and Noam Elkies)
- #23 Smaller p24 glider gun: A new second-smallest glider gun after the Gosper glider gun, fitting in a 20 × 20 bounding box. (by cvojan, vivi, and James Pascua)
- #24 Lisp in Life: A Lisp interpreter implemented in Conway’s Game of Life, using technology similar to the Quest for Tetris project. This is the first implementation of a standardized high-level programming language inside Conway’s Game of Life. (by Hikaru Ikuta)
- #25 Completion of the 21-bit strict still life synthesis project and the 20-bit pseudo still life synthesis project: Glider syntheses for all 21-bit strict still lifes and all 20-bit pseudo still lifes. (by Alex Greason, May13, wwei23, iNoMed, Daniel Vargas, Jeremy Tan, Adam P. Goucher, Carson Cheng, Goldtiger997, and Tanner Jacobi)
- #26 New stable conduits and converters: Several new stable conduits and converters, including the Speed Tunnel, HRx65R, a small stable 180° reflector (the "Jubjub reflector"), F149, Lx129, HL224H, RSE14T117, and NW-2T16. (by Mitchell Riley, Simon Ekström, Evin, Entity Valkyrie 2, Tanner Jacobi, and qqd)
- #27 p8 "functionally stable" glider reflector: A period-8 180° glider reflector that works in every phase and hence can be used as if it were stable. (by Tanner Jacobi)
- #28 Soup search discoveries from distributed computing projects: Thanks to the efforts of Darren Li, in 2022 Catagolue started receiving a much larger number of distributed-computing search results, especially for symmetric soups. This contributed to a large number of new discoveries; see the Charity Engine and Open Science Grid articles for examples. (by Darren Li / Charity Engine and Open Science Grid)
- #29 New gun periods: Guns of five previously unsolved periods: 25, 27, 34, 37, and 43. (by David Raucci, iNoMed, Nico Brown, Mitchell Riley, goldenratio, Luke Kiernan, Gustone and cvojan)
- #30 New greyships: A variety of new greyships, many of which were found with Keith Amling’s new search program, LLSSS. (by Hartmut Holzwart and Keith Amling)
- #31 New c/2 patterns from soup searches: Ships, puffers, and a rake found from 'unnatural' soup searches. The ship 58P8H4V0 and a p28 block puffer were found in symmetric soups; the ship 35P12H6V0, the p112 puffer, and p12 rake were found in soups with the leading edge of the spaceships already present. (by mystical, Charity Engine, and wwei23)
- #32 232P7H3V0: A new record for the smallest 3c/7 spaceship. (by Keith Amling)
In case some of you are concerned about mixing up the numbers, here is a version optimized for voting. Simply replace the name of each pattern with the number of asterisks that you want to give it (and remove lines corresponding to patterns that you don't want to vote for).
#01 74P34
#02 Raucci's p38
#03 Unsynthesizable and limited-ancestor objects
#04 Record lifespan puffer-based methuselahs
#05 Explicit 15-glider reverse caber tosser
#06 Five new p23 engines
#07 The Great Oscillator Discovery Project
#08 Engineered diehards
#09 Quartermax
#10 Gliderless Gosper glider gun breeder
#11 New quadratic growth records
#12 Self-synthesizing glide-reflecting loopship
#13 Speed Orthogonoid
#14 Speed Orthogonal Loopship
#15 Nico Brown's strictly volatile oscillators
#16 Taco
#17 New honeyfarm catalysts
#18 Component for adding a "crotchet" to a c/3 spaceship
#19 Small Max predcessors
#20 Strictly volatile p86 R-pentomino hassler
#21 New spaceship syntheses
#22 New reflector periods
#23 Smaller p24 glider gun
#24 Lisp in Life
#25 Completion of the 21-bit strict still life synthesis project and the 20-bit pseudo still life synthesis project
#26 New stable conduits and converters
#27 p8 "functionally stable" glider reflector
#28 Soup search discoveries from distributed computing projects
#29 New gun periods
#30 New greyships
#31 New c/2 patterns from soup searches
#32 232P7H3V0
Voting will end on 1st September 2023 00:00 UTC EDIT: Now closed.
b25s34h, b35s1368, b3s0246, b38s246