Pattern of the Year 2018 competition

[77topaz]

It's a new year... which means we can hold the POTY competition for the previous one! The same voting as the previous 2017 and belated 2013 and 2014 competitions will be used.

There were quite a number of interesting patterns discovered in 2018, so here's an initial list of entries:

• #01 0E0P metacell (by Adam P. Goucher): a unit cell which doesn't require a background grid of OFF cells to function, allowing unusual classes of patterns such as quadratic replicators and RROs to be imported into CGoL from other rules.
• #02 42883M (by Adam P. Goucher): a recording-breaking methuselah, discovered using apgsearch.
• #03 Jormungant's G-to-H (by Jormungant): a 2G-to-H converter with a short recovery time, allowing the optimisation of numerous guns.
• #04 Quinti-Snarks (by Tanner Jacobi): period-quintupling reflectors useful for guns.
• #05 Period-33 glider gun (by Arie Paap and Matthias Merzenich): the first true period-33 gun.
• #06 Period-52 glider gun (by Dave Greene, Matthias Merzenich, Adam P. Goucher, Chris Cain, and Entity Valkyrie): the first true period-52 gun.
• #07 Reverse caber-tosser (by Adam P. Goucher, Dave Greene, and Chris Cain): a complex mechanism which theoretically allows any glider-synthesisable pattern to be synthesised in just 35 gliders, by encoding the pattern's complexity into the distance between the gliders rather than their quantity.
• #08 Sierpinski triangle generator (by Luka Okanishi): a breeder that outputs gliders in the shape of a growing Sierpinski triangle.
• #09 Sir Robin (by Adam P. Goucher and Tomas Rokicki): a (2,1)c/6 spaceship, the first elementary knightship discovered in CGoL.

From the time of posting, I will allow a period of one week (which could be extended further if there is sufficient interest) for people to propose any additional entries before the voting starts.

EDIT: Additional entries:

• #10 Bronco (by Tanner Jacobi): the second elementary G-to-H to be discovered, following the venerable syringian TJ/JT tradition -- discovered by Tanner Jacobi and named by Jeremy Tan;
• #11 New self-constructing spaceships (by Dave Greene): including a loopship and HashLife-friendly variants of the Orthogonoid and Demonoid (no giraffeship yet);
• #12 Stable line crosser (by Dave Greene and Goldtiger997): a modernised rehash of David Bell's periodic circuitry for transmitting a glider across a line of cells;
• #13 Cottonmouth (by A for Ampere): a pushalong for the c/10 copperhead spaceship;
• #14 Fast Universal Regulators (by Dave Greene): ingenious use of pulse dividers to reduce the period of the drive gun of a universal regulator;
• #15 5c/9 signal injector (by Rhombic, Simon Ekström, and Chris Cain): a method of transforming Herschels to 5c/9 drifters with a recovery time of 62;
• #16 Minstrel 4 (by Entity Valkyrie): the first manually-assembled knightship;
• #17 New high period oscillators discovered from symmetrical soup searches (by carybe)
• #18 Self-constructing strict volatility-1 oscillator compiled by Goldtiger997, with a record-low V value of 3,506,910;
• #19 Camelship (by Chris Cain): a self-constructing spaceship with a new step distance, (3,1), based in part on the volatility-1 oscillator but with a unique design component, a loop-crossing recipe-switching signal;
• #20 c/2 diagonal telegraph recipe (by Martin Grant): a 140-glider recipe to create a detectable c/2 diagonal signal traveling non-destructively along a very^N long barge or ship;
• #21 Goldtiger997's Amazing 2 in 1 Reusable Multipurpose Minstrel Remover and Detector™ (by Goldtiger997);
• #22 Period-doubling fireship tagalong (by christoph.r)
• #23 Infinite distinct diagonal spaceships and infinite distinct orthogonal spaceships guns (by Adam P. Goucher and Goldtiger997)
• #24 Huge 2D-extensible wick-supporting pushalong (by Hartmut Holzwart): minimum length of over a thousand cells.
• #25 p9 bouncer (by Matthias Merzenich, carybe, and Noam Elkies): can reflect a p27 glider stream using a p9 oscillator found with apgsearch the same day.
• #26 p3 bumper (by Arie Paap and Tanner Jacobi): the first reflector to work at p39. It also enabled the construction of a smaller p57.
• #27 The first non-monotonic 2c/5 ship (by Arie Paap, Matthias Merzenich, and Bullet51)
• #28 Turing Machine Simulator (by Michael Simkin)
• #29 p46 gliderless LWSS gun (by Nathaniel Johnston): the smallest known gliderless LWSS gun.
• #30 p4 bouncer (by Arie Paap): the fastest known p4 reflector.
• #31 p6 180-degree reflector and related guns (by Arie Paap, Tanner Jacobi, and Jormungant)
• #32 New honeyfarm hasslers [1], [2], [3] (by Tanner Jacobi and Matthias Merzenich)
• #33 New mid-period (7-10) sparkers [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] (by Dongook Lee, Josh Ball, Martin Grant, Aidan F. Pierce, carybe, and Bullet51)
• #34 p18-21 pseudo-period LWSS/MWSS/HWSS guns (by Chris Cain, Adam P. Goucher, Entity Valkyrie, 2718281828, and Goldtiger997): the previous lowest known pseudo-period *WSS gun was p22.

[Macbi]

We should probably wait until it's 2019 everywhere on Earth.

[calcyman]

I've doubled the length of the initial list:

• #10 Bronco (by Tanner Jacobi): the second elementary G-to-H to be discovered;
• #11 New self-constructing spaceships (by Dave Greene): including a loopship, giraffeship, and hashlife-friendly variants of the Orthogonoid and Demonoid;
• #12 Stable line crosser (by Dave Greene and Goldtiger997): a modernised rehash of David Bell's periodic circuitry for transmitting a glider across a line of cells;
• #13 Cottonmouth (by A for Ampere): a pushalong for the c/10 copperhead spaceship;
• #14 Fast Universal Regulators (by Dave Greene): ingenious use of pulse dividers to reduce the period of the drive gun of a universal regulator;
• #15 5c/9 signal injector (by Rhombic and Chris Cain): a method of transforming Herschels to 5c/9 drifters with a recovery time of 62;
• #16 Minstrel 4 (by Entity Valkyrie): the first manually-assembled knightship;
• #17 p64 thunderbird hassler (by carybe): popped out of a symmetrical soup;
• #18 p14 shuttle (by carybe): very small and capable of reflecting gliders.

[dvgrn]

Combining, adding links, and appending another seven nominations:

• #01 0E0P metacell (by Adam P. Goucher): a unit cell which doesn't require a background grid of OFF cells to function, allowing unusual classes of patterns such as quadratic replicators and RROs to be imported into CGoL from other rules.
• #02 42883M (by Adam P. Goucher): a recording-breaking methuselah, discovered using apgsearch.
• #03 Jormungant's G-to-H (by Jormungant): a 2G-to-H converter with a short recovery time, allowing the optimisation of numerous guns.
• #04 P4 quinti-Snark and P5 quinti-Snark (by Tanner Jacobi): period-quintupling reflectors useful for guns.
• #05 Period-33 glider gun (by Arie Paap and Matthias Merzenich): the first true period-33 gun.
• #06 Period-52 glider gun (by Dave Greene, Matthias Merzenich, Adam P. Goucher, Chris Cain, and Entity Valkyrie): the first true period-52 gun.
• #07 Reverse caber-tosser (by Adam P. Goucher, Dave Greene, and Chris Cain): a complex mechanism which theoretically allows any glider-synthesisable pattern to be synthesised in just 35 gliders, by encoding the pattern's complexity into the distance between the gliders rather than their quantity.
• #08 Sierpinski triangle generator (by Luka Okanishi): a breeder that outputs gliders in the shape of a growing Sierpinski triangle.
• #09 Sir Robin (by Adam P. Goucher and Tomas Rokicki): a (2,1)c/6 spaceship, the first elementary knightship discovered in CGoL.
• #10 Bronco (by Tanner Jacobi): the second elementary G-to-H to be discovered, following the venerable syringian TJ/JT tradition -- discovered by Tanner Jacobi and named by Jeremy Tan;
• #11 New self-constructing spaceships (by Dave Greene): including a loopship and HashLife-friendly variants of the Orthogonoid and Demonoid (no giraffeship yet);
• #12 Stable line crosser (by Dave Greene and Goldtiger997): a modernised rehash of David Bell's periodic circuitry for transmitting a glider across a line of cells;
• #13 Cottonmouth (by A for Ampere): a pushalong for the c/10 copperhead spaceship;
• #14 Fast Universal Regulators (by Dave Greene): ingenious use of pulse dividers to reduce the period of the drive gun of a universal regulator;
• #15 5c/9 signal injector (by Rhombic, Simon Ekström, and Chris Cain): a method of transforming Herschels to 5c/9 drifters with a recovery time of 62;
• #16 Minstrel 4 (by Entity Valkyrie): the first manually-assembled knightship;
• #17 p64 thunderbird hassler (by carybe): popped out of a symmetrical soup;
• #18 p14 shuttle, 34P14.1 (by carybe): very small and capable of reflecting gliders;
• #19 Self-constructing strict volatility-1 oscillator compiled by Goldtiger997, with a record-low V value of 3,506,910;
• #20 camelship (by Chris Cain): a self-constructing spaceship with a new step distance, (3,1), based in part on the volatility-1 oscillator but with a unique design component, a loop-crossing recipe-switching signal;
• #21 c/2 diagonal telegraph recipe (by Martin Grant): a 140-glider recipe to create a detectable c/2 diagonal signal traveling non-destructively along a very^N long barge or ship;
• #22 Goldtiger997's Amazing 2 in 1 Reusable Multipurpose Minstrel Remover and Detector™;
• #23 Period-doubling fireship tagalong discovered by christoph.r
• #24 Infinite distinct diagonal spaceships and infinite distinct orthogonal spaceships guns (by Adam P. Goucher's and Goldtiger997)
• #25 huge 2D-extensible wick-supporting pushalong (by Hartmut Holzwart) -- minimum width of over a thousand cells.

We should probably wait until it's 2019 everywhere on Earth.

It's true that I still have almost eight hours left until midnight -- but I trust that if I post a POTY-worthy pattern before 2019 rolls around at my location, it will still be possible to add a nomination for it. It's probably safe to compile this initial list in the meantime --

[77topaz]

Nice! Within hours, we are already just one entry off 2017's record total of 25 POTY entries, showing how this was indeed a very productive year for CGoL! I'll set up the corresponding OCA competition sometime in the next 48 hours.

EDIT: Now we've matched it! (On the topic of #25, has anyone actually bothered to check whether that 1000-length is the minimum? HH's post definitely didn't have the minimum width for the spaceship in the other dimension, as my post below it shows.)

[Entity Valkyrie]

More entries (Entity Valkyrie):

P57 bumper loop
P49 bumper loop

New LWSS, MWSS and HWSS gun periods (See Status and User:Entity Valkyrie/Pseudo-period-21_LWSS_Gun)
The p13-assisted p52 gun

[77topaz]

I've added the bumper loops, but the p13-assisted p52 gun is already covered by #06. Also, two of your links just lead to empty pages.

[Ian07]

• #27 p9 bouncer (by Matthias Merzenich, carybe, and Noam Elkies): Can reflect a p27 glider stream using a p9 oscillator found with apgsearch the same day.

[Goldtiger997]

Here are some more:

• #28 p3 bumper (by Arie Paap and Tanner Jacobi): The first reflector to work at p39. It also enabled the construction of a smaller p57
• #29 The first non-monotonic 2c/5 ship (by Arie Paap, Matthias Merzenich, and Bullet51)
• #30 Turing Machine Simulator (by Michael Simkin)
• #31 New high period oscillators discovered from symmetrical soup searches (by carybe)

I got some of these from this thread. There are some more in there as well which I'm not sure about nominating.

[77topaz]

• #27 p9 bouncer (by Matthias Merzenich, carybe, and Noam Elkies): Can reflect a p27 glider stream using a p9 oscillator found with apgsearch the same day.

Here are some more:

• #28 p3 bumper (by Arie Paap and Tanner Jacobi): The first reflector to work at p39. It also enabled the construction of a smaller p57
• #29 The first non-monotonic 2c/5 ship (by Arie Paap, Matthias Merzenich, and Bullet51)
• #30 Turing Machine Simulator (by Michael Simkin)
• #31 New high period oscillators discovered from symmetrical soup searches (by carybe)

I got some of these from this thread. There are some more in there as well which I'm not sure about nominating.

I've added #27 through to #30 - we've really blasted past the previous record number of nominations, within only a day! I haven't added the suggested #31, though, because that's already covered by #17 and #18.

[Entity Valkyrie]

I've added the bumper loops, but the p13-assisted p52 gun is already covered by #06. Also, two of your links just lead to empty pages.

I forgot to add the user:entity valkyrie to the p21 lwss gun

[Entity Valkyrie]

I got some from this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3552

Theere are low period LWSS guns in there.

[dvgrn]

(On the topic of #25, has anyone actually bothered to check whether that 1000-length is the minimum? HH's post definitely didn't have the minimum width for the spaceship in the other dimension, as my post below it shows.)

I tried to reduce it when it first showed up, and then figured out that there are two independent prime numbers involved.

The edges repeat every 59 cells and the agar repeats every 19 cells... 59*19 = 1121, so we can increase or decrease the agar length by 1121N -- but the published agar is only 1097 cells long, so there doesn't seem to be a way to reduce it.

[Sokwe]

I have a few recommendations regarding already-submitted patterns:

• #4 (p4 and p5 quinti-snarks) This entry should just be called "quinti-Snark".
• #17 (p64 oscillator) and #18 (p14 oscillator) should be combined as carybe's new high-period oscillators (this is Goldtiger's #31). This entry should also include a new p36 oscillator from September and a new p16 oscillator from October.
• #25 (Hartmut's extensible pushalong) Should say "minimum length of", not "minimum width of".
• #26 (bumper loops) should be removed. The p49 bumper loop is not really a discovery from this year, and the p57 bumper loop is mentioned along with the p3 bumper.

I went through the posts from 2018 in the oscillator discussion thread. There's a lot of great stuff there. Here are five new nominations:

• p46 gliderless LWSS gun (by Nathaniel Johnston) I think this is the smallest known gliderless LWSS gun.
• p4 bouncer (by Arie Paap): The fastest known p4 reflector.
• p6 180-degree reflector and related guns (by Arie Paap, Tanner Jacobi, and Jormungant)
• New honeyfarm hasslers [1], [2], [3] by (Tanner Jacobi and Matthias Merzenich)
• New mid-period (7-10) sparkers [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] (by Dongook Lee, Josh Ball, Martin Grant, A for awesome, carybe, and Bullet51)

New LWSS, MWSS and HWSS gun periods (See Status and User:Entity Valkyrie/Pseudo-period-21_LWSS_Gun)

More properly, the nomination should look like this:

• p18-21 pseudo-period LWSS/MWSS/HWSS guns (by Chris Cain, Adam P. Goucher, Entity Valkyrie, 2718281828, and Goldtiger997): the previous lowest known pseudo-period *WSS gun was p22.

We should probably wait until it's 2019 everywhere on Earth.

There have certainly been some people champing at the bit to start the contest.

[77topaz]

Those are good suggestions; I've implemented them.

[Gamedziner]

Seeing as no-one else has put forth their nomination, I'll go first: I pick Sir Robin, as finding an elementary knightship was one of the long-standing dreams of the Life community. It also caused the highest amount of traffic in this site's history.
EDIT: See post below, this vote doesn't count.

[calcyman]

Seeing as no-one else has put forth their nomination, I'll go first: I pick Sir Robin, as finding an elementary knightship was one of the long-standing dreams of the Life community. It also caused the highest amount of traffic in this site's history.

From the time of posting, I will allow a period of one week (which could be extended further if there is sufficient interest) for people to propose any additional entries before the voting starts.

[Freywa]

I'll vote for the reverse caber tosser (#7). I used to be much interested in glider syntheses, and Gustavo's boasts about 386-glider constructions of things, so this is a truly important and useful pattern. (Rather, family of patterns – the construction recipe has been improved over time.)

[77topaz]

I'll vote for the reverse caber tosser (#7). I used to be much interested in glider syntheses, and Gustavo's boasts about 386-glider constructions of things, so this is a truly important and useful pattern. (Rather, family of patterns – the construction recipe has been improved over time.)

As the post immediately above yours points out, voting hasn't started yet! It'll start on January 8th, and I'll create a new thread for the voting.

[AforAmpere]

Are we doing the one, two and three star thing from previous years?

[Rhombic]

Are we doing the one, two and three star thing from previous years?

I was about to point this out - I think we all agreed late year that this system was particularly good.
Everyone will be able to vote (0,) 1, 2 or 3 stars for as many patterns as you wish.

[Freywa]

I'll vote for the reverse caber tosser (#7). I used to be much interested in glider syntheses, and Gustavo's boasts about 386-glider constructions of things, so this is a truly important and useful pattern. (Rather, family of patterns – the construction recipe has been improved over time.)

As the post immediately above yours points out, voting hasn't started yet! It'll start on January 8th, and I'll create a new thread for the voting.

Remember to transfer my pre-vote to the actual vote once voting starts (or I'll do it myself).

[77topaz]

Are we doing the one, two and three star thing from previous years?

Yes, as I pointed out in the first line of the OP. "The same voting as the previous 2017 and belated 2013 and 2014 competitions will be used."

Remember to transfer my pre-vote to the actual vote once voting starts (or I'll do it myself).

The voting will be in a separate thread, so to be safe you should repost it there once the voting starts.

[Sarp]

Instead of having "minstrel 4" wouldn't it make more sense to just have "minstrels"?

[Hunting]

Vote for #5.