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Important Life Lessons:

Life can be a confusing game at times. Here's some important lessons you should follow:

  1. Time stops for no man - Life is always changing, before you know it, there could be whole new generations before your eyes!

  2. There is order in chaos - Life may seem confusing, but there is order hidden in the chaos. All it takes is a bit of time for the patterns to reveal themselves.

  3. Close the gaps with those around - It's important to stay tight with those closest in life. Get rid of the gaps to keep those around close.

  4. See the bigger picture - You will progress further through life if you don't focus on the individuals, but scan the whole as a collection.

  5. Keep going - You will be presented with new challenges in life, but keep going with what has worked so far and things will once again become clear.

But the most important life lesson:

Well, that's for you to find out yourself...

           enter image description here

$$\huge\text{What is the most important lesson in life?}$$

Google Sheets link of grid

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    $\begingroup$ @JLee could technically be solved on phone, but all I'll say is a computer would be much easier, who knows, might still be unsolved later! :P $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 28, 2022 at 15:54
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    $\begingroup$ Sounds like perhaps Conway's Game of Life may reveal something? $\endgroup$
    – FirstName LastName
    Commented Jul 28, 2022 at 23:17
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    $\begingroup$ @FirstNameLastName perhaps... why not investigate ;) $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 28, 2022 at 23:24
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    $\begingroup$ Thank you for this. I've been having something of a rough day, and it made me smile. $\endgroup$
    – gregsdennis
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 1:40
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    $\begingroup$ @gregsdennis always happy to make someones day a little better :) $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 8:27

1 Answer 1

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The answer is

"Life is a beautiful puzzle!"

Solution:

The first hint tells us that "life is always changing", and before we know it, there could be "new generations before our eyes". This is a pun on Conway's Game of Life, in which an initial configuration changes with each mathematical iteration of the rules, which is known as a "generation".

Here's where

the grid at the bottom comes in. The grid is a valid pattern in Conway's Game of Life, and if we heed step 2's advice to wait "for the patterns to reveal themselves" and advance the pattern for two generations, we reveal the following 7x7 array of 3x3 patterns:

Now,

heeding step 3's advice to "close the gaps with those around" and step 4's advice to "see the bigger picture", we unify these 3x3 patterns into a 21x21 big pattern:

enter image description here

This

looks a lot like a QR code! Scanning it takes us to a Google web search with the word D6yTR in the search bar. Going to https://i.sstatic.net/D6yTR.png takes us to another Conway's Game of Life pattern. This time, we need only evolve it for one generation to reveal the answer:

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ So close!! You're 1/2 steps away - my hint here is '?????.png' (The solution will make much more sense than having to scroll through google) $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 0:05
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    $\begingroup$ @BeastlyGerbil Updated! Is the solution correct? $\endgroup$
    – Cloudy7
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 0:17
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    $\begingroup$ correct! Good job, hope it was enjoyable! :) $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 0:19
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    $\begingroup$ @BeastlyGerbil It was! Finally my years' worth of experience with rot13(PTbY) came in handy! $\endgroup$
    – Cloudy7
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 0:21
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    $\begingroup$ haha, knew it would only be a matter of time before someone clocked all the horrible puns involved :P $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 0:23

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