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NNN
NCN
NNN
`N': Neighbours of cell `C'.
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The game or puzzle takes place in a two dimensional grid of cells.
A cell is `live' or `dead'.
If a cell is live and has 2 or 3 live neighbours at time n then
it stays live at time n+1, otherwise it becomes dead at time n+1.
If a cell is dead and has exactly 3 live neighbours at time n then
it becomes live at time n+1, otherwise it stays dead at time n+1.
The idea is that a cell with too few neighbours gets lonely
and that one with too many suffocates.
Use the HTML FORM below
to get a random setting,
or to set your own initial configuration.
The `go', `pause', `randomise' and `clear' buttons do as their names
suggest.
All sorts of interesting behaviour is possible.
For example start this pattern near the top-left corner:
*
*
***
`Clear' the area and type the pattern in
the textarea,
then `go'.
Notes
The Cambridge (UK) mathematician John Conway
invented the "game" c1970.
Martin Gardner described it in his "Mathematical Games" column
in Scientific American pp120-123 October 1970.
1999 © L.A.,
Computer Science and Software Engineering,
Faculty of Information Technology,
Monash University.
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