The Silver Game of Life Lexicon

Famous Game of Life configurations collected by Stephen A. Silver

A lexicon of terms relating to John Horton Conway's Game of Life. The largest single source for this lexicon - at least in its earlier versions - was a glossary compiled by Alan Hensel "with indispensable help from John Conway, Dean Hickerson, David Bell, Bill Gosper, Bob Wainwright, Noam Elkies, Nathan Thompson, Harold McIntosh, and Dan Hoey."

(2 columns, 339 rows)

Examples

Basic Examples

Retrieve the ResourceObject:

In[1]:=
ResourceObject["The Silver Game of Life Lexicon"]
Out[1]=

View the data:

In[2]:=
ResourceData["The Silver Game of Life Lexicon"]
Out[2]=

Visualization

Create an animation of the Gosper glider gun, the first pattern known to have infinite growth:

In[3]:=
ListAnimate[
 ArrayPlot /@ NestList[
   CellularAutomaton[<|"Dimension" -> 2, "GrowthSurvivalCases" -> {{3}, {2, 3}}|>][#] &, ArrayPad[
    Normal@ResourceData["92b798c6-88e1-4aea-af77-538431dacc1b"][
       "Gosper glider gun"]["Configuration"], 5], 30], AnimationRunning -> False]
Out[3]=

View the pentadecathlon, a period 15 oscillator found by Conway in 1970:

In[4]:=
ListAnimate[
 ArrayPlot /@ NestList[
   CellularAutomaton[<|"Dimension" -> 2, "GrowthSurvivalCases" -> {{3}, {2, 3}}|>][#] &, ArrayPad[
    Normal@ResourceData["92b798c6-88e1-4aea-af77-538431dacc1b"][
       "pentadecathlon"]["Configuration"], 4], 15], AnimationRunning -> False]
Out[4]=

View the phoenix, a period 2 oscillator where all cells die in each generation:

In[5]:=
ListAnimate[
 ArrayPlot /@ NestList[
   CellularAutomaton[<|"Dimension" -> 2, "GrowthSurvivalCases" -> {{3}, {2, 3}}|>][#] &, ArrayPad[
    Normal@ResourceData["92b798c6-88e1-4aea-af77-538431dacc1b"][
       "phoenix"]["Configuration"], 1], 2], AnimationRunning -> False]
Out[5]=

Wolfram Research, "The Silver Game of Life Lexicon" from the Wolfram Data Repository (2018)   https://doi.org/10.24097/wolfram.86089.data

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