Block
- Type
- Still life
- Period
- 1 (stable)
- Discovered
- 1970 (Conway)
The smallest still life: a 2×2 square that never changes. Every live cell has exactly 3 live neighbours (survives under S23) and no dead neighbour has 3 live ones (no births).
A short glossary of the most recognisable patterns in Conway's Game of Life. Every pattern here follows the standard B3/S23 ruleset — see the rules page for how it works.
Tap Open on any pattern to drop it onto the simulator and press play.
Still lifes
Patterns that never change from tick to tick — a stable balance of survival with no births.
Beehive
- Type
- Still life
- Period
- 1 (stable)
- Discovered
- 1970 (Conway)
The second-smallest still life. Along with the block, blinker and glider, it's one of the most common patterns to emerge from random soups.
Oscillators
Patterns that return to their starting shape after a fixed number of ticks (the period).
Blinker
- Type
- Oscillator
- Period
- 2
- Discovered
- 1970 (Conway)
The simplest oscillator: a row of three cells flips between horizontal and vertical every tick. Blinkers make up roughly a third of all naturally occurring oscillators.
Toad
- Type
- Oscillator
- Period
- 2
- Discovered
- 1970 (Simon Norton)
A period-2 oscillator of six cells. Each phase is the other's mirror shifted by one cell.
Pulsar
- Type
- Oscillator
- Period
- 3
- Discovered
- 1971 (Conway)
The most common period-3 oscillator. Despite its 13×13 footprint, pulsars appear surprisingly often in random starts.
Spaceships
Oscillators that also translate across the grid, so each period ends shifted from where it started.
Glider
- Type
- Spaceship
- Period
- 4
- Discovered
- 1970 (Richard Guy)
The smallest and best-known spaceship. Travels diagonally at c/4 (one cell every four ticks). Bill Gosper's glider gun (1970) was the first pattern proven to grow without bound and won John Conway's $50 prize.
Lightweight spaceship (LWSS)
- Type
- Spaceship
- Period
- 4
- Discovered
- 1970 (Conway)
The smallest orthogonal spaceship. Travels horizontally at c/2 (one cell every two ticks). Together with the middleweight and heavyweight spaceships it forms the *WSS family.
Guns
Stationary patterns that periodically emit spaceships — the first proof that Life patterns can grow forever.
Gosper glider gun
- Type
- Gun
- Period
- 30
- Discovered
- 1970 (Bill Gosper)
The first known gun. It emits a new glider every 30 ticks and disproved Conway's conjecture that no B3/S23 pattern can grow forever. This one discovery unlocked the whole field of engineered Life constructions, including Turing-complete computers built inside the grid.
Want more background? Wikipedia's Conway's Game of Life article covers the rules, the game's history, and a handful of example patterns.