TMBR: March 2026
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This edition of TMBR is in progress and has not yet been released. Please add any notes you think may be relevant (including in the form a of a TODO with a link to any relevant Discord discussion).
This Month in Beaver Research for March 2026. We celebrated bbchallenge's fourth birthday on 8 March.
TODO: Write a proper introductory paragraph.
Meta
- Famous math youtuber 2swap made a couple of videos about Turing Machines arranged into grids and colored based on their halting status for BB(2,2), BB(3,2), BB(2,3), BB(4,2) and BB(5,2) respectively, then made a two-hour long Youtube video about the same topic on their second channel.
Holdouts
- BB(6): 1e14 machines: 171. 1e15 machines: 237. 10 solved machines.
- Holdouts lists for machines not simulated to 1e14 and 1e15 steps were created. The holdouts list counts were 178 and 252 respectively. See Spreadsheet for BB6.
- Later, prurq found 10 more machines in the holdouts list that had previously been simulated to 1e15: thus the new 1e15 holdout count was 242.
- Andrew Ducharme solved two machines using FAR.
- prurq found two machines [1][2] to be Translated Cyclers. Shawn Ligocki verified one of them and discovered its preperiod to be over steps. mxdys verified the other. Both were 1e14 and 1e15 holdouts, thus reducing those holdout counts by 2.
- mxdys found four more [3][4] Translated Cyclers in the remaining holdouts and solved one more TM using FAR.
- Andrew Ducharme solved a machine using FAR. This machine was a 1e14 and 1e15 holdout, thus reducing those holdout counts by 1.
- prurq found 3 more machines previously simulated so far in the 1e14 list, and 2 more in the 1e15 list (both were also 1e14). This means 1e14 holdout count was reduced by 3, and 1e15 holdout count was reduced by 2.
- Discord user mammillaria simulated a 1e14 holdout thus far, therefore reducing that holdout count by 1.