Pattern of the Year 2016 (Votes)

[Alexey_Nigin]

Welcome to the voting thread for the new Pattern of the Year competition! This time, we have some great entries, here is the full list:

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#01 - 8-bit Computer: It is the first 8-bit computer in any cellular automaton, and easily the most realistic computer ever constructed in Life. It has a ROM which contains the program, consisting of 32 instructions which are stored in 21 bits each. For RAM, it has a register bank containing 8 8-bit registers. For output, it has a "printer" with 8 pixels. By Coban.

#02 - 15-bit SL Syntheses: A project to find syntheses of all 15-bit still lifes in under 15 gliders turned out to be a very prolific collaboration. Using Catagolue soups along with known and new converter mechanisms, several hundred new syntheses were created. The goal was achieved in just 41 days. By BlinkerSpawn, Goldtiger997, Bob Shemyakin, Mark Niemiec, Martin Grant, Chris Cain, et al.

#03 - Grandfather-less Pattern: "Is there a configuration which has a father but no grandfather?" This is the statement of the grandfather problem, one of the longest-standing open problems in Life, having been unsolved for decades in spite of a $50 prize offer from John Conway Himself in September 1972. It was only this year that the first grandfather-less pattern was discovered using a SAT solver. By mtve.

#04 - Rich's p16: This is a small p16 oscillator that appeared naturally. It is compact for its period and has easily accessible sparks. Most notably, it can filter glider streams similarly to the blocker, which led to reductions in many guns that previously utilized other filter mechanisms. By Rich Holmes.

#05 - Small GoEs: A few record-breaking Gardens of Eden and orphans were found including an orphan with only 89 defined cells. By Steven Eker.

#06 - Caterloopillars: Previously, all engineered spaceships had speeds that were either fixed (Caterpillar) or adjustable but always very low (Gemini). Caterloopillars have the best of both worlds: their speed is variable, and the fastest ones can travel as quickly as c/4. So far all caterloopillars have been orthogonal, but a project to build one with adjustable slope is underway. By Michael Simkin, David Bell, et. al.

#07 - Herschel Splitter: This is an elegant solution to an old circuitry problem: a direct Herschel signal splitter that recovers in less than a hundred ticks. People had been looking for something exactly like this for very nearly twenty years, ever since the original 1996-97 universal set of Herschel conduits. It was made by extending an Fx119 conduit with a partial copy of itself to extract the second Herschel output. By Luka Okanishi.

#08 - Bumper: This reflector mechanism can be attached to a variety of sparky oscillators to make reflectors of the corresponding periods. Since the resulting reflectors have different timing than the snark, they solve a range of "my glider is in the wrong phase" wiring problems. A small wave of record-breaking guns followed soon after the bumper's debut. By Tanner Jacobi.

#09 - Statorless p5: This is the first statorless oscillator of its period. Since the period is prime, the lack of stator implies that the oscillator is strictly volatile, which is a rare property. By Josh Ball.

#10 - Copperhead: In addition to being the first of its speed, this c/10 orthogonal spaceship is so small that it is surprising nobody discovered it before. Its small size allowed the creation of a 22-glider synthesis, and a gun was made soon afterwards. A pseudo-tagalong found a bit later made it possible to create c/10 puffers and rakes. Much of copperhead's fame is due to the mystery surrounding its discovery: it was posted by a newly-joined anonymous user who got inactive afterwards. By zdr, Simon Ekström, et al.

#11 - New Gun Periods: In three days, three new true gun periods were discovered: p61, p58, and p57. By Luka Okanishi, thunk, Matthias Merzenich, and Chris Cain.

#12 - Aperiodic Tiles: This is an implementation of a particular set of Wang tiles in the Game of Life. The Life tiles form a stable pattern if and only if the corresponding arrangement of Wang tiles is valid. Since this set of Wang tiles can only form aperiodic arrangements, so can the Life tiles. By NotLiving.

#13 - Spaghetti Monster: This is the first spaceship with a speed of 3c/7, which has been one of the most sought-after speeds in the last 15 years. The ship was discovered with knightt, a relatively new search program. The search took about two months, even though the width was continiously tweaked to make it faster. By Tim Coe.

#14 - p7 Sparker: This pattern adds a new relatively strong HW emulator to the p7 collection, which previously only had the pipsquirter. It was used to complete a p28 wick with no prior stabilization. By Dongook Lee.

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Now that you have read about the awesome discoveries of the past year, it's time to vote! Vote only for the patterns you like, and give each of them 1, 2, or 3 stars depending on how much you like them. You can vote for your own patterns if you want. Here is an example vote:

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The voting will end on June 1, at midnight UTC.

[blah]

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[Gamedziner]

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[BlinkerSpawn]

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[calcyman]

This has been a notably good year. As a mathematician, I feel obliged to give highest precedence to the grandfather-less pattern. The other three discoveries below also occupied 'gaps' I was pleased to see filled.

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[dvgrn]

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(As a recovering mathematician, I think the wonderful Hofstadterian strange-loop quality of #06 - Caterloopillars is not getting quite enough attention yet... especially since they fill an unlimited number of gaps in known spaceship periods.)

Also, there's an inaccuracy in the #08 - Bumper description, copied from the other thread:

Since the resulting reflectors are color-preserving, they can be used in many places where the color-changing snark does not work.

Snarks are actually color-preserving reflectors, like bumpers. They have different timings -- Snarks are five ticks faster than bumpers -- so the second half of the sentence is true: adding enough bumpers, or swapping out enough Snarks, can help deliver gliders to seven classes of spacetime locations that are inaccessible if you're using only Snarks. The remaining eight of the sixteen total classes are still not accessible; to get to the other color of the chessboard, you also have to add a color-changing reflector to the mix.

The color-changing reflector type that Kazyan mentioned in contrast to the bumper, is the "figure eight reflector". "Figure eight" really just refers to the p8 model, though -- there are also p5, p6, and p7 versions.

A more general term might be "boat-based reflector" -- see Pipsquirter 1, Pipsquirter 2, and p5 reflector. "Domino-spark reflector" or possibly "pipsquirter reflector" are tempting, but unfortunately not accurate for the p5 case. There isn't really a generally-accepted term for these things. Am trying to fix that, starting with entries in the next edition of the Life Lexicon, but for the moment it's just plain confusing.

-- Anyway, apologies for the long tangent, and happy Conway's Life Day to all!

[Naszvadi]

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[praosylen]

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I agree with @dvgrn that the Caterloopillars haven't received enough attention. My only problem with them, though, is that they make searching for "new" orthogonal spaceship speeds less exciting because they aren't actually "new" anymore. It's kind of poignant, in a way.

[muzik]

10 *** (in case this wasn't obvious)
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Give everything else 1 star

[David]

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[gameoflifeboy]

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If the planar tiles that generalized still-life constrains were a Life pattern, I would vote for them too.

Also, I think it should be added to the Caterloopillar description that they can move at any orthogonal rational speed less than but not equal to c/4.

[Nathaniel]

As others mentioned already, this was a fantastic year. Glad we get to vote for more than just our top 3

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[codeholic]

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[simsim314]

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[gameoflifemaniac]

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[Rhombic]

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[biggiemac]

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[Saka]

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[Goldtiger997]

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[Saka]

Why does the title say 2016?

[calcyman]

Why does the title say 2016?

It's the last complete year to have elapsed.

[fluffykitty]

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[Alexey_Nigin]

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By the way, I take the opportunity to remind you that the competition is ending very soon, so if you want to vote, vote now.

[simeks]

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[Sokwe]

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