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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:

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`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.