switch engine
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.40 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
1
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A particular methuselah in Conway's Game of Life that temporarily exhibits glide reflection symmetry while leaving debris behind, allowing for the construction of spaceships, puffers, and rakes.
Example Sentences
- "2. Is it possible to make the switch engine leave debris other than the normal 8 blocks/288 generations?"
- "He did this by placing a large number of switch engines together so as to eliminate all debris. His original ship required 13 switch engines, but his smaller one given here only uses 10 of them."
- "The average random Life pattern settles down instead of exploding (if you ignore output gliders and spaceships). There are exceptional quadratic-growth cases, mostly involving switch engines, but most random patterns affect only their immediate area."