LWSS

L1W4S1S1

A form of lightweight spaceship — A particular orthogonal spaceship in Conway's Game of Life, and the smallest such example.

Scrabble 7

Meanings

nounLWSS (plural LWSSs or LWSSes)

plural LWSSs · plural LWSSes

  1. abbreviationinitialismcellular automataInitialism of lightweight spaceship.

    For example, two gliders can produce another glider, and three gliders can produce a LWSS or MWSS or a HWSS.

    1992 August 13, David Bell, “Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 1)”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)
    2 more examples

    the simple "gliders" work perfectly fine, but the LWSS spaceship works great until the 15th generation when a singular pixel gets misplaced and the entire structure collapses.

    1992 August 23, Albert Schnezer, “Programming Life in Tpascal”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)

    It begins with the period-20 spaceship that consists of a p20 puffer stabilized by a third lwss; this is the basis for the standard p20 forward and backward rakes.

    1994 December 7, Paul Callahan, “Program to search for collisions in Conway's Life (C code)”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)

Synonyms & antonyms

Cite this entry
APA

LWSS. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/LWSS

MLA

“LWSS.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/LWSS. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “LWSS,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/LWSS.

Source: LWSS on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.