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Questions tagged [busy-beaver]

A busy beaver maximises some property of the computation model (e.g. execution time, memory usage, output length) subject to the constraint that it must halt.

24 votes
20 answers
3k views

Live a longer life

Conways' Game of Life is a well known cellular automaton "played" on an infinite grid, filled with cells that are either alive or dead. Once given an initial state, the board evolves ...
caird coinheringaahin g's user avatar
14 votes
12 answers
2k views

Output two numbers (Robbers' thread)

This is the robbers' thread to a cops-and-robbers challenge. Click the link to find the cops' thread. In the cops' thread of this challenge, answerers will be writing programs which output two ...
Wheat Wizard's user avatar
  • 99k
24 votes
20 answers
2k views

Output two numbers (Cops' thread)

This is the cops' thread to a cops-and-robbers challenge. Click the link to find the robbers' thread. The challenge here is very simple. Create two programs of the same size, in the same language, ...
Wheat Wizard's user avatar
  • 99k
13 votes
1 answer
597 views

Longest infinite loop in 5 states

Challenge Statement The goal of this challenge is to build the 5 state Infinite Time Turing Machine that takes the longest to halt. Since Infinite Time Turing Machines can run for infinite time your ...
Wheat Wizard's user avatar
  • 99k
7 votes
1 answer
352 views

Busy beaver in a coin

\$BB\$ is the busy beaver function, an uncomputable function. Write a program which when given an integer \$n\$ as input, will output \$BB(n)\$, with at least \$\frac 2 3\$ probability. You can do ...
l4m2's user avatar
  • 25k
18 votes
1 answer
807 views

Largest SKI output in less than 200 combinators

The Challenge Create an terminating expression in SKI Combinator Calculus in less than 200 combinators (S, K, I) that reduces to the expression with the most combinators. There will be no limit on how ...
nph's user avatar
  • 753
28 votes
12 answers
2k views

Infinite ordinals from a well-ordering

Your task is to write a short program that represents a large (infinite) ordinal, using a well-ordering of the set of positive integers. Your program will take two different positive integers and ...
AnttiP's user avatar
  • 7,898
4 votes
1 answer
461 views

Write a fast-growing assembly function

Synopsis Your goal is to implement the (asymptotically) fastest growing function within bounded code on a fictional CPU utilizing a quite limited, yet (probably) turing-complete instruction set. ...
univalence's user avatar
  • 1,659
17 votes
5 answers
1k views

Keep PPCG running in Game of Life

Conways' Game of Life is a well known cellular automaton "played" on an infinite grid, filled with cells that are either alive or dead. Once given an initial state, the board evolves ...
caird coinheringaahin g's user avatar
4 votes
5 answers
649 views

Largest Error Message in 100 bytes [duplicate]

The goal is to raise the error message with the most bytes! The error message may not be generated by the program itself, such as Python's raise. errors that do not ...
someone's user avatar
  • 339
17 votes
7 answers
1k views

As close to flat as possible

Write a program or function that fulfills the following Scores less than 101 bytes under normal code-golf rules Takes no input1 and always outputs a single integer. Every integer is a possible output....
Wheat Wizard's user avatar
  • 99k
0 votes
7 answers
389 views

Busy beaver of sorts [duplicate]

I'm surprised this hasn't been done yet, but here we go. Create a program which prints some number of 1s (ideally as large as possible) before halting. The rules are simple: Your program is bounded ...
AndrewTheCodegolfer's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
1k views

Plight of the Concorde

Background The traveling salesman problem (TSP) asks for the shortest circuit that visits a given collection of cities. For the purposes of this question, the cities will be points in the plane and ...
A. Rex's user avatar
  • 2,599
27 votes
6 answers
6k views

Golf a number bigger than Loader's number

As a follow up to Shortest terminating program whose output size exceeds Graham's number and Golf a number bigger than TREE(3), I present a new challenge. Loader's number is a very large number, ...
Christopher King's user avatar
-3 votes
3 answers
229 views

Golf some ones, and a program too [closed]

Introduction Busy Beavers are programs (specifically Turing Machine programs) that aim to output the most ones as possible, while having the least states as possible and halting. Challenge Your ...
kepe's user avatar
  • 943

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