Gloss­ary

Guide writ­ten by Playspout. Con­tri­bu­tions from the Amaz­ing Com­munity.

This guide is cur­rently un­der­go­ing change. Keep in mind, strategies may change.

Sigma #

Sigma is the num­ber of stu­dents. E.g. “I have 300 sigma” means I have 300 total stu­dents. “Gradu­ate every 5 sigma” means to gradu­ate every 5 stu­dents. De­noted as \(\sigma \) in the game.

Tau #

Tau, format­ted in the game as \(\tau\), is the main cur­rency gained from do­ing the­or­ies. Tau is used to in­crease f(t).

Rho #

Rho, format­ted in the game as \(\rho\), is also a cur­rency gained from do­ing the­or­ies. However, rho is re­set upon pub­lic­a­tion. In fact for most the­or­ies, the tau in a the­ory is simply the max­imum rho ever reached in that the­ory.

Pub­lic­a­tion / Pub #

Pub­lic­a­tion/​Pub is the act of re­set­ting the­or­ies to ac­cu­mu­late higher total mul­ti­pli­ers. Higher mul­ti­pli­ers al­low us to reach higher rho and tau in the fu­ture. In Eng­land Pub­lic­a­tion is also a place where people can so­cial­ise and drink (joke).

Dot #

rhodot, taudot, qdot, (format­ted as \(\dot\rho\), \(\dot\tau\), and \(\dot{q}\)) or any other vari­able with ‘dot’ at the end sig­nify the rate of change of the vari­able, usu­ally every second. For ex­ample, if rhodot = 3, this usu­ally means that rho is in­creas­ing by 3 every second.

Mile­stone #

In the­or­ies, mile­stones are up­grades to as­pects of the­ory equa­tions. They are un­locked when your max­imum rho reach cer­tain points. Mile­stones per­sist through pub­lic­a­tions. Fur­ther­more, for most the­or­ies you can al­loc­ate mile­stone points to dif­fer­ent mile­stone com­bin­a­tions.

Dis­tri­bu­tion #

Dis­tri­bu­tion refers to the cur­rent tau amounts of all of your the­or­ies. So, in a con­ver­sa­tion, someone might ask:

“What’s your dis­tri­bu­tion?”

“my dis­tri­bu­tion is 564 486 552 635 856 902 531 470.”

This means that their the­ory 1 is at e564 tau, the­ory 2 at e486 tau, and so on with the­ory 8 at e470 tau.

Dis­tri­bu­tion Over­push­ing #

A strategy to do the­or­ies that have high pub­lic­a­tion mul­ti­pli­ers first to ac­cu­mu­late more stu­dents. We then use these ex­tra stu­dents on the­or­ies that be­ne­fit more from hav­ing more stu­dents. See over­push­ing.

Gradu­ation / Grad #

A prestige layer, which re­sets most vari­ables ex­cept tau. Gradu­ations al­low ac­cu­mu­la­tion of more stu­dents, in­creas­ing tau rates through in­creased R9 power.

Su­prem­acy / Sup #

An­other prestige layer lower than gradu­ation. This re­sets most vari­ables also. It is mainly used to ac­cu­mu­late enough psi to buy su­prem­acy up­grades.

Psi #

A cur­rency gained from per­form­ing su­prem­a­cies. Usu­ally writ­ten as \(\psi \). It is used to buy su­prem­acy up­grades.

Phi #

A cur­rency gained from spend­ing stu­dents on stu­dent up­grades. Usu­ally writ­ten as \(\varphi \). It is used to boost f(t) or boost the­ory rates.

R9 #

Refers to the 9th Re­search of the stu­dent up­grades in the ‘stu­dents’ tab, which is the re­search up­grade be­low the­or­ies. This re­search boosts the­ory rates sig­ni­fic­antly. You start the game with ‘0r9’ (0 levels). The max­imum is ‘3R9’, which means you have all 3 levels of the up­grade.

R9 swap­ping #

A strategy where you keep your stu­dents in 3R9 for 99.99% of the time, swap­ping to other re­searches to in­crease phi and f(t), then prestige. This al­lows us to gain the be­ne­fit of hav­ing 3R9 AND higher f(t) at the same time.

Strategy / Strat #

Usu­ally refers to the­ory strategies. A strategy might refer to the or­der at which the­ory vari­ables are bought, or which ones are auto­bought and which ones to ig­nore.

Act­ive and Idle #

Usu­ally re­ferred in con­text of strategies. An act­ive strategy re­quires more at­ten­tion and manual vari­able buy­ing, but has a higher po­ten­tial tau/​hour gains.

Hard Strat #

Strategies that are con­sidered ‘su­per act­ive’ and/​or hard to ex­ecute by the ma­jor­ity of play­ers. This may be be­cause of spe­cific buy tim­ings or re­quir­ing con­stant at­ten­tions. Ex­amples of hard strategies in­clude T3­Play2 and T8­PlaySo­l­arSwap.

Mile­stone Swap­ping / MS #

The act of swap­ping mile­stones, usu­ally in the middle of a pub­lic­a­tion. This is usu­ally part of a su­per act­ive strategy. If done cor­rectly, it can sig­ni­fic­antly boost tau/​hour. This type of strategy is most com­mon prior to reach­ing all mile­stones in a the­ory, with a not­able ex­cep­tion of T8­PlaySo­l­arSwap, which con­tin­ues us­ing mile­stone swap­ping past full mile­stones.

Doub­ling Vari­ables / Doub­lings #

Usu­ally re­ferred to the­ory vari­ables that are mul­ti­plied by 2 or more each time you buy (Vari­ables with 2^x). Can some­times refer to a really power­ful vari­able. An ex­ample of a doub­ling vari­able is \(q_2\) in the­ory 4.

mod10 Vari­ables #

A lot of the vari­ables in­crease their val­ues in a step­wise func­tion, with mod­u­lus 10 in­cre­ments.

Doub­ling strats / d strats #

A sub­set of strategies that usu­ally in­volve buy­ing mod10 vari­ables at 1/​10th of the cost of a doub­ling vari­able. These strategies usu­ally per­form ad­mir­ably for most the­or­ies.

Pub multi #

A short-hand of Pub­lic­a­tion Mul­ti­plier. Usu­ally refer to the cur­rent in­crease in the total mul­ti­plier when you pub­lish. For ex­ample, most the­or­ies in the pub­lic­a­tion tab will have texts that say ‘Re­set the­ory up­grades and cur­ren­cies to mul­tiply your in­come by xxxx’. Pub multi is the ‘xxxx’ num­ber.

Total multi #

This is the num­ber un­der­neath the pub multi num­ber above. It is the total mul­ti­plier of all your pub­lic­a­tions in that the­ory. It is de­pend­ent on both your pro­gress in the the­ory and on the amount of stu­dents you have.

CT, WSP, SL, EF, CSR2 #

Cus­tom The­or­ies

• Wei­er­straß Sine Product
• Se­quen­tial Lim­its
• Euler’s For­mula
• Con­ver­gents to Square Root 2

These are the 4 cur­rent of­fi­cial cus­tom the­or­ies. More cus­tom the­or­ies will even­tu­ally be re­leased, and we will up­date this por­tion of the guide when they do so.

Coast­ing #

The act of not buy­ing vari­ables and let­ting the­or­ies reach its pub­lic­a­tion point. This is usu­ally done when your pub­lic­a­tion mul­ti­plier is close to where you want to pub­lish. For ex­ample, you might start coast­ing at 2.0 mul­ti­plier with the in­ten­tion to pub­lish at 2.5 mul­ti­plier.

Ac­cel­er­a­tion / Ac­cel #

Refers to the us­age of the ac­cel­er­a­tion up­grade. It speeds up f(t) gains through in­creas­ing phi and ar­ti­fi­cially speed­ing up time (by tem­por­ar­ily in­creas­ing \(dt\)). However it does not af­fect the­or­ies. The equa­tion used in-game for ac­cel­er­a­tion is \(Ac­cel­er­a­tion = (9t+1)^{1/​9}\), where \(t\) is the num­ber of seconds the ac­cel­er­a­tion but­ton is held for. To re­duce the po­ten­tial for player ab­use, ac­cel­er­a­tion re­sets after be­ing held for 1 hour, at \(3.17x\).

LB #

LB (usu­ally in the lower­case form “lb”) is a short hand for “lead­er­board”. Both the iOS and An­droid ver­sions have built-in lead­er­boards, which can be ac­cessed through the set­tings menu. There are built-in lead­er­board for max F(t) and for the best times in each dif­fi­culty of every minigame.

There’s also a player-up­dated spread­sheet with more lead­er­boards, in­clud­ing the highest known val­ues that have been reached for each the­ory among many other stat­ist­ics.