mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

# Blog

## Archive

Show me a random blog post
▼ show ▼

## Making names in Life

2016-06-05
The Game of Life is a cellular automaton invented by John Conway in 1970, and popularised by Martin Gardner.
In Life, cells on a square grid are either alive or dead. It begins at generation 0 with some cells alive and some dead. The cells' aliveness in the following generations are defined by the following rules:
• Any live cell with four or more live neighbours dies of overcrowding.
• Any live cell with one or fewer live neighbours dies of loneliness.
• Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life.
Starting positions can be found which lead to all kinds of behaviour: from making gliders to generating prime numbers. The following starting position is one of my favourites:
It looks boring enough, but in the next generation, it will look like this:
If you want to confirm that I'm not lying, I recommend the free Game of Life Software Golly.

### Going backwards

You may be wondering how I designed the starting pattern above. A first, it looks like a difficult task: each cell can be dead or alive, so I need to check every possible combination until I find one. The number of combinations will be $$2^\text{number of cells}$$. This will be a very large number.
There are simplifications that can be made, however. Each of the letters above (ignoring the gs) is in a 3×3 block, surrounded by dead cells. Only the cells in the 5×5 block around this can affect the letter. These 5×5 blocks do no overlap, so can be calculated seperately. I doesn't take too long to try all the possibilities for these 5×5 blocks. The gs were then made by starting with an o and trying adding cells below.

### Can I make my name?

Yes, you can make your name.
I continued the search and found a 5×5 block for each letter. Simply Enter your name in the box below and these will be combined to make a pattern leading to your name!

### Similar posts

 Building MENACEs for other games MENACE at Manchester Science Festival The Mathematical Games of Martin Gardner MENACE