Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 11,12 (click to see context) from:
** Self-supporting spaceships are typically thousands of cells long. Early ones (e.g. caterpillar, centipede, waterbear) were powered by specific reactions moving at fixed speeds, but with the invention of the caterloopillar in 2016, it is now possible to create a spaceship for an arbitrary speed.
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
to:
** Self-supporting spaceships are typically thousands of cells long. Early ones (e.g. , caterpillar, centipede, waterbear) were powered by specific reactions moving at fixed speeds, but with the invention of the caterloopillar in 2016, it is now possible to create a spaceship for an arbitrary speed.
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanteddebris.debris.
----
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted
----
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
i made this same mistake a while ago, but unfortunately "meta" examples (including those related to how/when patterns were discovered) aren't allowed here
Changed line(s) 12,13 (click to see context) from:
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
* On July 21st, just one week after the discovery of the first p19 oscillator, the first p41 oscillator was found, proving life to be omniperiodic[[note]]which means that for any strictly positive integer n, there exists an oscillator of period n in Conway's Game of Life.[[/note]] after more than 53 years of research.
* On July 21st, just one week after the discovery of the first p19 oscillator, the first p41 oscillator was found, proving life to be omniperiodic[[note]]which means that for any strictly positive integer n, there exists an oscillator of period n in Conway's Game of Life.[[/note]] after more than 53 years of research.
to:
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
* On July 21st, just one week after the discovery of the first p19 oscillator, the first p41 oscillator was found, proving life to be omniperiodic[[note]]which means that for any strictly positive integer n, there exists an oscillator of period n in Conway's Game of Life.[[/note]] after more than 53 years of research.debris.
* On July 21st, just one week after the discovery of the first p19 oscillator, the first p41 oscillator was found, proving life to be omniperiodic[[note]]which means that for any strictly positive integer n, there exists an oscillator of period n in Conway's Game of Life.[[/note]] after more than 53 years of research.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 12 (click to see context) from:
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
to:
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.debris.
* On July 21st, just one week after the discovery of the first p19 oscillator, the first p41 oscillator was found, proving life to be omniperiodic[[note]]which means that for any strictly positive integer n, there exists an oscillator of period n in Conway's Game of Life.[[/note]] after more than 53 years of research.
* On July 21st, just one week after the discovery of the first p19 oscillator, the first p41 oscillator was found, proving life to be omniperiodic[[note]]which means that for any strictly positive integer n, there exists an oscillator of period n in Conway's Game of Life.[[/note]] after more than 53 years of research.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
null edit to refresh followed list
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 8 (click to see context) from:
** The reverse caber-tosser. Any glider synthesis, no matter how complex, can be recreated with as few as 16 gliders as of July 2022.
to:
** The reverse caber-tosser. Any glider synthesis, no matter how complex, can be recreated with as few as 16 15 gliders as of July November 2022.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
No meta moment, see this query
.
.Changed line(s) 12,30 (click to see context) from:
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
!!Meta
* New users coming along and casually solving problems which had stumped community veterans for ''decades'' happens more often than you'd think:
** Andrew J. Wade's first interaction with the Life community came in May 2010, when he announced the completion of the first ever obliquely-traveling spaceship, Gemini, which he had worked on in secrecy over five months. His solution was surprisingly elegant as well, being orders of magnitude faster than such a spaceship was previously predicted to be. Of course, his creation was [[LandslideElection easily awarded]] the title of Pattern of the Year.
** The discovery of the copperhead, a surprisingly tiny spaceship which moves unusually slowly - one cell every ten generations. Programs like gfind (first released in 1998) would have been able to find it rather easily, if anyone had bothered to try. But no one did until the user "zdr" came along in 2016, announcing in his first ever forum post that he had found the copperhead, and that "[[MemeticMutation there may be bugs in gfind]]" (sic).
** The grandfather problem, asking whether a pattern existed that had parents (i.e. immediate predecessors) but no grandparents (i.e. two-generation predecessors). The problem, first posed by Conway himself in 1972, was finally solved in 2016 by a user named "mtve", who had joined the community just a few weeks earlier.
* Pattern of the Year nominations generally don't start until January of the next year, because it ain't over until it's over, as has been proven time and time again:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. [[LandslideElection By a lot.]]
** The caterpillar was finally completed on December 31, 2004 following a lengthy construction process. It is generally agreed to be the Pattern of the Year for 2004, although it predates the competition.
** The winner of Pattern of the Year in 2014, the waterbear, was found on December 28.
** The scholar was found on December 30, 2019, and placed third out of 27 entries.
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.
* ''Multiple'' statements in the textbook ''Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction'' being InstantlyProvenWrong by a string of major discoveries in January 2022:
** January 6: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve a generalized version of the grandfather problem, showing that for every natural number ''n'' there exists a pattern with ancestors going back ''n'' generations but not ''n+1'' generations.
** January 12: David Raucci finds a period-38 oscillator, one of only four oscillator periods left to be discovered at the time.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' When we sent the book to press, I joked with Dave [Greene] that [[HilariousInHindsight a p19 oscillator was going to be found]] 9 days later (which works out to January 16). Seems I was off by 4 days and a factor of 2
** January 13: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve the unique father problem, a conjecture by Conway also dating back to 1972, showing that there exists a region of a pattern whose only predecessor is itself.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' Fine, we'll do a v3 of the book that includes all of the absurd discoveries from the last week, you jerks. Not unrelated Public Service Announcement: No more Life discoveries are allowed for the next three weeks. If anyone solve any more problems that have been open for 50 years before February 1, I am going to [[BurnBabyBurn light the [=ConwayLife=].com server on fire]].
!!Meta
* New users coming along and casually solving problems which had stumped community veterans for ''decades'' happens more often than you'd think:
** Andrew J. Wade's first interaction with the Life community came in May 2010, when he announced the completion of the first ever obliquely-traveling spaceship, Gemini, which he had worked on in secrecy over five months. His solution was surprisingly elegant as well, being orders of magnitude faster than such a spaceship was previously predicted to be. Of course, his creation was [[LandslideElection easily awarded]] the title of Pattern of the Year.
** The discovery of the copperhead, a surprisingly tiny spaceship which moves unusually slowly - one cell every ten generations. Programs like gfind (first released in 1998) would have been able to find it rather easily, if anyone had bothered to try. But no one did until the user "zdr" came along in 2016, announcing in his first ever forum post that he had found the copperhead, and that "[[MemeticMutation there may be bugs in gfind]]" (sic).
** The grandfather problem, asking whether a pattern existed that had parents (i.e. immediate predecessors) but no grandparents (i.e. two-generation predecessors). The problem, first posed by Conway himself in 1972, was finally solved in 2016 by a user named "mtve", who had joined the community just a few weeks earlier.
* Pattern of the Year nominations generally don't start until January of the next year, because it ain't over until it's over, as has been proven time and time again:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. [[LandslideElection By a lot.]]
** The caterpillar was finally completed on December 31, 2004 following a lengthy construction process. It is generally agreed to be the Pattern of the Year for 2004, although it predates the competition.
** The winner of Pattern of the Year in 2014, the waterbear, was found on December 28.
** The scholar was found on December 30, 2019, and placed third out of 27 entries.
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.
* ''Multiple'' statements in the textbook ''Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction'' being InstantlyProvenWrong by a string of major discoveries in January 2022:
** January 6: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve a generalized version of the grandfather problem, showing that for every natural number ''n'' there exists a pattern with ancestors going back ''n'' generations but not ''n+1'' generations.
** January 12: David Raucci finds a period-38 oscillator, one of only four oscillator periods left to be discovered at the time.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' When we sent the book to press, I joked with Dave [Greene] that [[HilariousInHindsight a p19 oscillator was going to be found]] 9 days later (which works out to January 16). Seems I was off by 4 days and a factor of 2
** January 13: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve the unique father problem, a conjecture by Conway also dating back to 1972, showing that there exists a region of a pattern whose only predecessor is itself.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' Fine, we'll do a v3 of the book that includes all of the absurd discoveries from the last week, you jerks. Not unrelated Public Service Announcement: No more Life discoveries are allowed for the next three weeks. If anyone solve any more problems that have been open for 50 years before February 1, I am going to [[BurnBabyBurn light the [=ConwayLife=].com server on fire]].
to:
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
!!Meta
* New users coming along and casually solving problems which had stumped community veterans for ''decades'' happens more often than you'd think:
** Andrew J. Wade's first interaction with the Life community came in May 2010, when he announced the completion of the first ever obliquely-traveling spaceship, Gemini, which he had worked on in secrecy over five months. His solution was surprisingly elegant as well, being orders of magnitude faster than such a spaceship was previously predicted to be. Of course, his creation was [[LandslideElection easily awarded]] the title of Pattern of the Year.
** The discovery of the copperhead, a surprisingly tiny spaceship which moves unusually slowly - one cell every ten generations. Programs like gfind (first released in 1998) would have been able to find it rather easily, if anyone had bothered to try. But no one did until the user "zdr" came along in 2016, announcing in his first ever forum post that he had found the copperhead, and that "[[MemeticMutation there may be bugs in gfind]]" (sic).
** The grandfather problem, asking whether a pattern existed that had parents (i.e. immediate predecessors) but no grandparents (i.e. two-generation predecessors). The problem, first posed by Conway himself in 1972, was finally solved in 2016 by a user named "mtve", who had joined the community just a few weeks earlier.
* Pattern of the Year nominations generally don't start until January of the next year, because it ain't over until it's over, as has been proven time and time again:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. [[LandslideElection By a lot.]]
** The caterpillar was finally completed on December 31, 2004 following a lengthy construction process. It is generally agreed to be the Pattern of the Year for 2004, although it predates the competition.
** The winner of Pattern of the Year in 2014, the waterbear, was found on December 28.
** The scholar was found on December 30, 2019, and placed third out of 27 entries.
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.
* ''Multiple'' statements in the textbook ''Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction'' being InstantlyProvenWrong by a string of major discoveries in January 2022:
** January 6: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve a generalized version of the grandfather problem, showing that for every natural number ''n'' there exists a pattern with ancestors going back ''n'' generations but not ''n+1'' generations.
** January 12: David Raucci finds a period-38 oscillator, one of only four oscillator periods left to be discovered at the time.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' When we sent the book to press, I joked with Dave [Greene] that [[HilariousInHindsight a p19 oscillator was going to be found]] 9 days later (which works out to January 16). Seems I was off by 4 days and a factor of 2
** January 13: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve the unique father problem, a conjecture by Conway also dating back to 1972, showing that there exists a region of a pattern whose only predecessor is itself.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' Fine, we'll do a v3 of the book that includes all of the absurd discoveries from the last week, you jerks. Not unrelated Public Service Announcement: No more Life discoveries are allowed for the next three weeks. If anyone solve any more problems that have been open for 50 years before February 1, I am going to [[BurnBabyBurn light the [=ConwayLife=].com server on fire]].debris.
!!Meta
* New users coming along and casually solving problems which had stumped community veterans for ''decades'' happens more often than you'd think:
** Andrew J. Wade's first interaction with the Life community came in May 2010, when he announced the completion of the first ever obliquely-traveling spaceship, Gemini, which he had worked on in secrecy over five months. His solution was surprisingly elegant as well, being orders of magnitude faster than such a spaceship was previously predicted to be. Of course, his creation was [[LandslideElection easily awarded]] the title of Pattern of the Year.
** The discovery of the copperhead, a surprisingly tiny spaceship which moves unusually slowly - one cell every ten generations. Programs like gfind (first released in 1998) would have been able to find it rather easily, if anyone had bothered to try. But no one did until the user "zdr" came along in 2016, announcing in his first ever forum post that he had found the copperhead, and that "[[MemeticMutation there may be bugs in gfind]]" (sic).
** The grandfather problem, asking whether a pattern existed that had parents (i.e. immediate predecessors) but no grandparents (i.e. two-generation predecessors). The problem, first posed by Conway himself in 1972, was finally solved in 2016 by a user named "mtve", who had joined the community just a few weeks earlier.
* Pattern of the Year nominations generally don't start until January of the next year, because it ain't over until it's over, as has been proven time and time again:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. [[LandslideElection By a lot.]]
** The caterpillar was finally completed on December 31, 2004 following a lengthy construction process. It is generally agreed to be the Pattern of the Year for 2004, although it predates the competition.
** The winner of Pattern of the Year in 2014, the waterbear, was found on December 28.
** The scholar was found on December 30, 2019, and placed third out of 27 entries.
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.
* ''Multiple'' statements in the textbook ''Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction'' being InstantlyProvenWrong by a string of major discoveries in January 2022:
** January 6: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve a generalized version of the grandfather problem, showing that for every natural number ''n'' there exists a pattern with ancestors going back ''n'' generations but not ''n+1'' generations.
** January 12: David Raucci finds a period-38 oscillator, one of only four oscillator periods left to be discovered at the time.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' When we sent the book to press, I joked with Dave [Greene] that [[HilariousInHindsight a p19 oscillator was going to be found]] 9 days later (which works out to January 16). Seems I was off by 4 days and a factor of 2
** January 13: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve the unique father problem, a conjecture by Conway also dating back to 1972, showing that there exists a region of a pattern whose only predecessor is itself.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' Fine, we'll do a v3 of the book that includes all of the absurd discoveries from the last week, you jerks. Not unrelated Public Service Announcement: No more Life discoveries are allowed for the next three weeks. If anyone solve any more problems that have been open for 50 years before February 1, I am going to [[BurnBabyBurn light the [=ConwayLife=].com server on fire]].
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 24 (click to see context) from:
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.
to:
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.winner.
* ''Multiple'' statements in the textbook ''Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction'' being InstantlyProvenWrong by a string of major discoveries in January 2022:
** January 6: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve a generalized version of the grandfather problem, showing that for every natural number ''n'' there exists a pattern with ancestors going back ''n'' generations but not ''n+1'' generations.
** January 12: David Raucci finds a period-38 oscillator, one of only four oscillator periods left to be discovered at the time.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' When we sent the book to press, I joked with Dave [Greene] that [[HilariousInHindsight a p19 oscillator was going to be found]] 9 days later (which works out to January 16). Seems I was off by 4 days and a factor of 2
** January 13: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve the unique father problem, a conjecture by Conway also dating back to 1972, showing that there exists a region of a pattern whose only predecessor is itself.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' Fine, we'll do a v3 of the book that includes all of the absurd discoveries from the last week, you jerks. Not unrelated Public Service Announcement: No more Life discoveries are allowed for the next three weeks. If anyone solve any more problems that have been open for 50 years before February 1, I am going to [[BurnBabyBurn light the [=ConwayLife=].com server on fire]].
* ''Multiple'' statements in the textbook ''Conway's Game of Life: Mathematics and Construction'' being InstantlyProvenWrong by a string of major discoveries in January 2022:
** January 6: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve a generalized version of the grandfather problem, showing that for every natural number ''n'' there exists a pattern with ancestors going back ''n'' generations but not ''n+1'' generations.
** January 12: David Raucci finds a period-38 oscillator, one of only four oscillator periods left to be discovered at the time.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' When we sent the book to press, I joked with Dave [Greene] that [[HilariousInHindsight a p19 oscillator was going to be found]] 9 days later (which works out to January 16). Seems I was off by 4 days and a factor of 2
** January 13: Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo solve the unique father problem, a conjecture by Conway also dating back to 1972, showing that there exists a region of a pattern whose only predecessor is itself.
--->'''Nathaniel Johnston:''' Fine, we'll do a v3 of the book that includes all of the absurd discoveries from the last week, you jerks. Not unrelated Public Service Announcement: No more Life discoveries are allowed for the next three weeks. If anyone solve any more problems that have been open for 50 years before February 1, I am going to [[BurnBabyBurn light the [=ConwayLife=].com server on fire]].
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
okay i think the italics here are a little excessive
Changed line(s) 20 (click to see context) from:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. ''[[LandslideElection By a lot.]]''
to:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. ''[[LandslideElection [[LandslideElection By a lot.]]'']]
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* Many Life constructions are absolute behemoths, some of them using millions or even billions of cells. Some notable examples include:
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8 Conway's Game of Life in Conway's Game of Life]], brought to you by the OTCA metapixel. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lO0iZDzzXk Now loops indefinitely]].
** The 0E0P metacell, whose very existence implies the existence of several other types of patterns simply because they are known to exist in other cellular automata.
** Nicolas Loizeau's 8-bit programmable computer, shown [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8unMqSp0bFY here]] computing the Fibonacci sequence. The updated version is now scalable and includes a 32x32 pixel display.
** ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' in Conway's Game of Life, via the "Quest for ''Tetris'' Processor". Almost as impressive is the [[https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life/142673#142673 six-part long Stack Exchange post]] explaining how it was made.
--->'''[=PhiNotPi=]:''' This began as a quest but ended as an odyssey.
** Speaking of phi and pi, Adam P. Goucher's pi and phi calculators, which not only compute the two mathematical constants, but also convert them into decimal digits which are then [[ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation printed as a matrix of blocks]].
** The reverse caber-tosser. Any glider synthesis, no matter how complex, can be recreated with as few as 16 gliders as of July 2022.
** Not as large as the previous examples, but Bill Gosper's glider gun breeder, at 749x338, was massive for a time when pen-and-paper was the dominant method of simulating Life patterns. Also notable for being the first pattern ever found to exhibit quadratic growth.
** Dean Hickerson's primer, which outputs spaceships if and only if they correspond to a prime number. Later derivatives output only twin primes and Fermat primes respectively.
** Self-supporting spaceships are typically thousands of cells long. Early ones (e.g. caterpillar, centipede, waterbear) were powered by specific reactions moving at fixed speeds, but with the invention of the caterloopillar in 2016, it is now possible to create a spaceship for an arbitrary speed.
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
!!Meta
* New users coming along and casually solving problems which had stumped community veterans for ''decades'' happens more often than you'd think:
** Andrew J. Wade's first interaction with the Life community came in May 2010, when he announced the completion of the first ever obliquely-traveling spaceship, Gemini, which he had worked on in secrecy over five months. His solution was surprisingly elegant as well, being orders of magnitude faster than such a spaceship was previously predicted to be. Of course, his creation was [[LandslideElection easily awarded]] the title of Pattern of the Year.
** The discovery of the copperhead, a surprisingly tiny spaceship which moves unusually slowly - one cell every ten generations. Programs like gfind (first released in 1998) would have been able to find it rather easily, if anyone had bothered to try. But no one did until the user "zdr" came along in 2016, announcing in his first ever forum post that he had found the copperhead, and that "[[MemeticMutation there may be bugs in gfind]]" (sic).
** The grandfather problem, asking whether a pattern existed that had parents (i.e. immediate predecessors) but no grandparents (i.e. two-generation predecessors). The problem, first posed by Conway himself in 1972, was finally solved in 2016 by a user named "mtve", who had joined the community just a few weeks earlier.
* Pattern of the Year nominations generally don't start until January of the next year, because it ain't over until it's over, as has been proven time and time again:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. ''[[LandslideElection By a lot.]]''
** The caterpillar was finally completed on December 31, 2004 following a lengthy construction process. It is generally agreed to be the Pattern of the Year for 2004, although it predates the competition.
** The winner of Pattern of the Year in 2014, the waterbear, was found on December 28.
** The scholar was found on December 30, 2019, and placed third out of 27 entries.
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8 Conway's Game of Life in Conway's Game of Life]], brought to you by the OTCA metapixel. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lO0iZDzzXk Now loops indefinitely]].
** The 0E0P metacell, whose very existence implies the existence of several other types of patterns simply because they are known to exist in other cellular automata.
** Nicolas Loizeau's 8-bit programmable computer, shown [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8unMqSp0bFY here]] computing the Fibonacci sequence. The updated version is now scalable and includes a 32x32 pixel display.
** ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' in Conway's Game of Life, via the "Quest for ''Tetris'' Processor". Almost as impressive is the [[https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life/142673#142673 six-part long Stack Exchange post]] explaining how it was made.
--->'''[=PhiNotPi=]:''' This began as a quest but ended as an odyssey.
** Speaking of phi and pi, Adam P. Goucher's pi and phi calculators, which not only compute the two mathematical constants, but also convert them into decimal digits which are then [[ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation printed as a matrix of blocks]].
** The reverse caber-tosser. Any glider synthesis, no matter how complex, can be recreated with as few as 16 gliders as of July 2022.
** Not as large as the previous examples, but Bill Gosper's glider gun breeder, at 749x338, was massive for a time when pen-and-paper was the dominant method of simulating Life patterns. Also notable for being the first pattern ever found to exhibit quadratic growth.
** Dean Hickerson's primer, which outputs spaceships if and only if they correspond to a prime number. Later derivatives output only twin primes and Fermat primes respectively.
** Self-supporting spaceships are typically thousands of cells long. Early ones (e.g. caterpillar, centipede, waterbear) were powered by specific reactions moving at fixed speeds, but with the invention of the caterloopillar in 2016, it is now possible to create a spaceship for an arbitrary speed.
* "Self-cleaning" glider syntheses, where a glider is spat out in just the right position to get rid of some, if not all, of the unwanted debris.
!!Meta
* New users coming along and casually solving problems which had stumped community veterans for ''decades'' happens more often than you'd think:
** Andrew J. Wade's first interaction with the Life community came in May 2010, when he announced the completion of the first ever obliquely-traveling spaceship, Gemini, which he had worked on in secrecy over five months. His solution was surprisingly elegant as well, being orders of magnitude faster than such a spaceship was previously predicted to be. Of course, his creation was [[LandslideElection easily awarded]] the title of Pattern of the Year.
** The discovery of the copperhead, a surprisingly tiny spaceship which moves unusually slowly - one cell every ten generations. Programs like gfind (first released in 1998) would have been able to find it rather easily, if anyone had bothered to try. But no one did until the user "zdr" came along in 2016, announcing in his first ever forum post that he had found the copperhead, and that "[[MemeticMutation there may be bugs in gfind]]" (sic).
** The grandfather problem, asking whether a pattern existed that had parents (i.e. immediate predecessors) but no grandparents (i.e. two-generation predecessors). The problem, first posed by Conway himself in 1972, was finally solved in 2016 by a user named "mtve", who had joined the community just a few weeks earlier.
* Pattern of the Year nominations generally don't start until January of the next year, because it ain't over until it's over, as has been proven time and time again:
** The most notable example was the 2-engine Cordership, which was assumed to not exist until December 31, 2017. It was nominated for Pattern of the Year just over 24 hours later, and ''won''. ''[[LandslideElection By a lot.]]''
** The caterpillar was finally completed on December 31, 2004 following a lengthy construction process. It is generally agreed to be the Pattern of the Year for 2004, although it predates the competition.
** The winner of Pattern of the Year in 2014, the waterbear, was found on December 28.
** The scholar was found on December 30, 2019, and placed third out of 27 entries.
* The discovery of the Snark, which was by far the smallest glider reflector using only still lifes. The fact that its discovery knocked out two of the seven previously unknown oscillator periods (43 and 53) was merely a side effect. This one was also a Pattern of the Year winner.
