It’s Life, Jim … a setter’s tale by Ploy
I’ve been a fan of John Horton Conway’s “Game of Life” since it was first publicised by Martin Gardner in Scientific American in October 1970. That such interesting patterns and effects could arise from extremely simple rules fascinated me. At that time, the best you could do with a “Life” computer program was to output its results, generation by generation, to a line printer. Not very inspiring! But this all changed with the arrival of faster processors and graphic displays, which allowed you to see the game’s true, dynamic, nature. Gliders really did glide, and oscillators really did oscillate. I was hooked.
The idea of using Life as the theme for a crossword had been in the back of my mind for some time. I realised that the topic was something of a niche one, and that many solvers would need to do a little research to tie it down. My thoughts therefore turned to The Magpie, which has a reputation for publishing puzzles over a very wide thematic spectrum, often with the need for some research.
From the start, I wanted the solver to end up “playing” Life using the cells of the puzzle’s grid, with the end result being a pattern of unchanging cells – a “still life”. This would provide a clear end point to the solving process. There are many stable elements available, including blocks, beehives, ships, ponds, etc. that could be used. The idea of gliders “moving” across the grid was very appealing, and I set about testing how things could be arranged.
Years ago, I’d made a fairly exhaustive study of glider collisions with various objects and knew of many that resulted in a stable pattern. (Did someone say “Get a Life”?) After considering various combinations, I decided to use two gliders on a “Collision Course” that would result in an unchanging pattern of two four-cell blocks. This was pleasingly symmetrical, and the eight cells could accommodate the letters J H CONWAY. Gliders are formed from five cells, and I soon hit upon the idea of identifying them in the grid via the ten letters of GAME OF LIFE, via letter clashes in those cells.
I played around with grid sizes, and positions of gliders and blocks, until I had a promising layout. I was then ready to use Ross Beresford’s “Sympathy” software, which is a powerful tool when constructing grids with letter, and other, constraints. After trying various bar patterns, I finally found a fillable grid.
I thought it would be a nice idea to make use of various Life words in the clues, if that were possible. Over the years, a huge lexicon has built up, and I thought this might be easy to do, though perhaps it would be best to avoid such terms as hivenudger, metacatacryst, pipsquirter, sesquihat, toad-sucker, and wickstretcher! However, though I got off to a good start with “oscillator” in 1 across, I found that the idea was getting in the way of writing decent clues, so regretfully I abandoned it.
With the clues completed, it was time for a trial run of the draft puzzle. This was expertly carried out by my regular test-solver, who has my heartfelt thanks – he knows who he is! With some resulting adjustments to preamble and clues, the puzzle was then ready to send off to The Magpie. I was delighted that the puzzle went down well with Mark, Simon and Shane, and that they would make it “The Magpie Puzzle” when it was published. The new set-up at Magpie headquarters gives an admirably smooth process for setters, even down to providing page-proofs for checking. During this process, I realised that there was a serendipitous match between the 19 generations in the puzzle’s Life game, and the answer ITERATE being clue 19. So the preamble was adjusted to take account of this piece of luck.
For those who noticed, I apologise for the typos in 34 down. These are entirely down to me, and occurred early on when transcribing from my handwritten clues.
There’s a great website for playing with Conway’s Game of Life at: http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/ Click on the “Enjoy Life” button, expand the window to full screen, click on “Open”, choose one of the built-in starting patterns ……. and be prepared to be mesmerised. There are various options to play with, the most interesting (to me) being the one which gives you control over the rules of the game. I found this applet very handy when checking Collision Course.
Feedback from solvers has been extremely interesting - thank you to all who commented. I am delighted that the puzzle was so well received. The Game of Life was variously played out, with pencil and paper, chessboards, spreadsheets, newly-written programs, online applets, Mathematica … even lentils! And I’m pleased that the puzzle served to introduce a number of solvers to Conway’s fascinating discovery.