Crotchet
| Crotchet | |||||||
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| Pattern type | Spark | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of cells | 5 | ||||||
| Bounding box | 3 × 2 | ||||||
| Static symmetry | Unspecified | ||||||
| Discovered by | Unknown | ||||||
| Year of discovery | 1969 | ||||||
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Crotchet is a commonly-seen polyomino spark. It is one of two pentomino grandparents of the V spark (and, by extension, great-grandparents of the domino), with the other being the short table.
While known since 1969 due to John Conway's early research into polyominoes, the spark was not given a non-systematic name until December of 2022, when analysis of a family of c/3 orthogonal ships in an attempt to find glider syntheses for arbitrarily-large spaceships of the speed resulted in the rediscovery of a wave which contains the spark in one phase. The term was originally given to a self-termination of the wave which evolves naturally from it,[1] but the name was eventually transferred to the 5-cell spark itself due to its close resemblance to a quarter note (♩, referred to as a "crotchet" in Commomwealth English),[2] with the wave instead being named "waltz" and its termination "anacrusis".
Uses
The crotchet is named due to its involvement in waltz, a wave which travels at a speed of c/3 orthogonal. On one of its phases, the wave is composed solely of spaced crotchets and pre-beehives. If left alone, one end of the wave will remain periodic without decaying and still moving at a speed of c/3 orthogonal; this side will evolve into a slightly different component named "anacrusis", differing from waltz due to the crotchet changing into a five-cell boat parent with a single cell attached to the main block diagonally rather than orthogonally.
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Notes