There are news, right? Of course there are! And if we have noth­ing new on Gilles (be­sides him pop­ping up to an­swer a ques­tion on cus­tom the­ory de­vel­op­ment and van­ish­ing again), we still have enough other news (or I just have to talk about my­self). Get ready!

• More cus­tom the­or­ies were ad­ded to the un­of­fi­cial lead­er­boards to bring the total up to 11(!) cus­tom the­or­ies (newly ad­ded Lem­ma’s Garden by propfeds, Ba­sic The­ory by in­valid-user, Ex­po­nen­tial Limit Series by AfuroZamurai, Col­latz Con­jec­ture by propfeds and De­riv­at­ive Equa­tion by Sky­high173) - par­ti­cip­a­tion could be higher though
• An­other new cus­tom the­ory by Gaunter named Laplace Trans­forms with some new concept is avail­able here: ht­tps://​raw.git­hubuser­con­tent.com/​lrob­t97/​Laplace-Trans­form/​main/​the­ory.js
• If you have enough of these math the­or­ies, I got you covered: after a looong pause I fi­nally de­cided to put out the Al­pha of my Sudoku minigame cus­tom the­ory: ht­tps://​raw.git­hubuser­con­tent.com/​AfuroZamurai/​cus­tom-the­or­ies/​dev/​nonof­fi­cial/​Sudok­u_al­pha.js
• If I’m already talk­ing about my­self: I have no­ticed that I passed 1000 days play­ing Ex­po­nen­tial Idle dur­ing this month! Not per­fectly match­ing e6900 tau gained (I was a bit too fast for that) but still quite a long and nice time we have this game!
• If you wanted to know how high you can get t to grow I got you covered: in 2 years on a save past ee50000 without us­ing ac­cel it gets up to about 9.6e15 (missed the ac­tual day of the 2 year an­niversary…)
• Prob­ably a bit late but bet­ter than never: e600 T8 was passed on a main save by Chickened!
• The Dis­cord people know him but Sol­arion made a re­appear­ance and blessed us with his in­cred­ible e715 T2 on his main save - who is the most crazy one now?

Ob­lig­at­ory plea for feed­back:
If any­one has ideas, please let me (and/​or the guide team) know. If you have cri­ti­cism do it as well. If you don’t want to end up in any news/​rank­ings out­side the server, then con­tact me so I could either ex­clude or an­onymise you.

So after once again avoid­ing the rank­ings in fa­vor of news for a bit (and be­ing ex­tra late any­way), it is fi­nally time for the up­date!

June 2023 Top 20 on the lead­er­board, their at the time the list was com­piled and their Dis­cord con­nec­tion (Dis­cord names in brack­ets are not their nick­names!):

1. HeadedArt26 (Playspout) - ee69302:

If you ever looked at the re­cord sheet you should know him be­cause he’s lit­er­ally every­where there (still hold­ing him off from T2/​T4 for now^^). Also pretty act­ive here, do­ing everything ima­gin­able! Ad­ded fun fact: did ee50000 without T9. I won­der if there is any­thing he is­n’t act­ive in^^

Playspout is the Ling Ling of Ex­po­nen­tial IdleAct­ive with 40 hours a day (and more saves than any per­son should have) and still search­ing for new the­ory strats and writ­ing and and and. Hav­ing es­tab­lished a firm lead the only ques­tion to re­main seems: will Gen still try again or will Playspout lose some mo­tiv­a­tion and al­low someone else to get close? So could you slow down please?
There are some chal­lengers but not like really close yet. So no, he is­n’t slow­ing down^^

2. Adam­H99 (nemesis) - ee68897:

Found the server some while ago and no longer an un­known! Looks like he is go­ing fast and steady, this time over­tak­ing me. There we have someone on a mis­sion…

So for quite a while now he is con­sist­ent in do­ing hard­core act­ive push­ing and so I just hope he loses mo­tiv­a­tion he con­tin­ues to go strong. Good at minigames! Too bad for him Playspout pos­ted his score again but I doubt this will de­ter him. I’m pretty sure he had the num­ber 1 spot for a brief while in-between, so good for him!

Also whatever EI ster­oids he’s on, I think I’d need them too^^ I mean at some point he’ll have to pay the price of not over­push­ing but that spirit is com­mend­able.
Also come back please to Dis­cord and share your secrets…

3. Vin­tage­Sur­fer­56606 (kinger55) - ee68865:

He has dis­covered the main reason to be on the server: the tau bot^^ Well, that joke lost its mean­ing a lot of months ago but it is hard to let go^^
Else he’s not really par­ti­cip­at­ing (un­less I ask for a tau up­date and re­cently not even then…) but he’s a force on the lead­er­board for sure. He cer­tainly figured out CTs and firmly planted him­self in the Top 5. Top 3 was only a ques­tion of time and when I wrote it was be­cause of the cour­tesy of Gen not up­dat­ing - well, I was wrong! I have to add: he has def­in­itely over­taken me in any ima­gin­able way and the ques­tion re­mains: can he do the same in the fu­ture for the ones ahead? I would­n’t say no to that.

4. (new) Gen­Er­a­tion­Na­tion (Gen) - ee68688:

While he can­not con­sist­ently keep up the 1000 mes­sages per month, the Jug­ger­naut is not stop­ping any time soon, neither in-game, nor in the server. While he did slow down, he passed 10000 mes­sages!

Maybe not at the ab­so­lute top for CTs (though I think in terms of ef­fi­ciency he ac­tu­ally is or at least very close) and maybe suffered a bit in ori­gin­als but still go­ing strong enough with ac­cel (the mad­man^^) to have more f(t) than one would ex­pect.
Last month he was out (ex­cept as the drop-out) of the rank­ings and I wished for him to come back - and here is! I hope it won’t be over half a year for an­other up­date^^

5. (-1) Eld­rail (AfuroZamurai) - ee68606:

Al­ways a bit dif­fi­cult to write about one­self^^ Activ­ity here is more in phases but at least pretty reg­u­larly (so hope­fully daily), in the game I do like my idle the­or­ies (who could’ve guessed?). Fa­vour­ite phrase: Time for act­ive the­or­ies I guess^^ (while not do­ing that un­til I set my­self a chal­lenge). Also loves chess.

Fi­nally got #1 in the rank­ings a few month ago but without ac­tu­ally ever be­ing #1…! Too bad Playspout showed up again be­fore the cheater ahead of me was re­moved. I guess I’ll have to keep hunt­ing!
Note: hunt­ing can be defined broadly and this ab­so­lutely inef­fi­cient phase of idle is cer­tainly just a long-term plot to re­gain my #1 spot for real. Totally.

Well, yeah, about that… I’m back to be­ing the Idle Lord and have found my fun in that. Still try­ing though, just not very hard. At least I’m back at cash­ing in with act­ives some­what reg­u­larly, so with more tau than Gen (oO) maybe I can chal­lenge for higher places again.

6. Fi­nalul­tima (Fi­nalul­tima) - ee68407:

While they showed up a day be­fore the rank­ings they got into the Top 20 in “real” Dis­cord con­ver­sa­tions (after some month of talk­ing with the tau bot!) activ­ity is still al­most neg­li­gible but happy to have them and look­ing for­ward to see­ing more!

Amaz­ing fast pro­gress and now the gap to close is pretty big. Still an im­press­ive achieve­ment get­ting here and after see­ing their dis­tri­bu­tion I have no doubt it is fully de­served! Though oth­ers aren’t here to settle down either…

Looks like per­sever­ance is pay­ing off and they are creep­ing ever closer.

7. (-2) Black­Seal94 (Black­Seal) - ee68407:

Sel­dom seen here but al­ways great to see him up­date his in­sane T6 stat (dis­count­ing Playspout who should­n’t count any­ways)^^ Cus­tom the­or­ies have kind of awoken him to be more act­ive here, which is nice. It also made him more act­ive in the rank­ings, which is not so nice ;)

He had turned on CT over­drive but as the new CTs lost their power he’s back to catch­ing up. After a long time in the Top 5 he’s out by vir­tue of Gen re­appear­ing and not even one ee dif­fer­ence. Well, with the com­pet­i­tion hot on his heels this begs the ques­tion: can he keep up?

8. (-1) colinc719 (?) - ee68399:

They were maybe the biggest sur­prise when en­ter­ing the rank­ings, shoot­ing up from some­where I can­not even re­mem­ber dir­ectly into the Top 20 and never look­ing back. We can­not even know more about them be­cause it looks like they are still not on the server. Maybe the fu­ture will give us more (so far not).
For now they just entered Top 10 after first dis­ap­pear­ing for a bit from the lead­er­boards com­pletely and stay­ing after not dis­ap­pear­ing this month.

9. (-1) some gib­ber­ish I won’t even try type­writ­ing[name may change any second] (nubest) - ee68347:

She has been a long time mem­ber of this server, with quite a lot of mes­sages a name to know. Maybe not the founder but ex­cess­ive user of a rather un­usual kind of text emoji: ouo and vari­ations of it. She also likes to call hax and people bad which seems to cor­rel­ate with her or­tho­graphic skills.

Un­for­tu­nately life came in the way and be­sides a pause on the server her lead­er­board place­ment was suf­fer­ing for it. For­tu­nately she is now back! And what a state­ment to get back into the Top 10 and even climb­ing and climb­ing! Maybe its the cat emo­jis^^ Or the elab­or­ate strategies which are surely not act­ive be­cause nub only idles, sure.

Looks like the com­pet­i­tion is­n’t mak­ing life easy but never count her off!

10. (-1) Up­Artz (?) - ee68202:

Seems to be act­ive on Red­dit but not here, though this is un­clear.

They were already out of the Top 20 and were of­ten on the edge but be­cause of that I’m even more im­pressed by their fight­ing spirit, see­ing the gap clos­ing to ac­tu­ally en­ter­ing the single di­gits! Ap­plause for reach­ing the Top 10! Des­pite Gen ap­pear­ing it is still the Top 10!

11. (-1) Reck­on­Crew (Reck­on­Crew) - ee68143:

They have all their mes­sages on the server from a single day about 26 months ago, which is an achieve­ment in it­self I guess^^

Not much else to say ex­cept they are pretty stable, mainly gain­ing a place now and then (and some­times los­ing one). I do like stable play­ers for this rank­ing^^

He did give me some work by switch­ing places but at least he re­mains mainly in the same rank­ings group (which is now ir­rel­ev­ant but whatever)^^

12. ad­equateryan (ad­equate ryan) - ee67858:

Entered a few month ago. But who do we wel­come into our ranks? I have no idea as they are seem­ingly on the server but with a whoop­ing 0 mes­sages so far. While I al­ways feel a bit of sad­ness see­ing vet­eran play­ers fall, I do like new play­ers com­ing in, show­ing all is fluid and you can catch up.

Now I won­der if they’ll stay or even rise or maybe even more sur­pris­ingly start to talk on the server! So far only rise and no talk… Or no rise and no talk… Or no talk and rise…

13. (+2) birrel69 (birrel) - ee67830:

The rival of d4N­f6Bg5 (or rather the in­vol­un­tary rival). While at first fall­ing be­hind, he has long made his move and passed him for a rising spot in the rank­ings.
He popped up on the server to an­nounce his entry into the Top 20 in Decem­ber, only to be over­taken again be­fore the rank­ings was made. For now he’s safely in util­iz­ing the same strat of hav­ing 2 saves.
Some­times he shows up and ex­changes some words with his rival, stay­ing com­mit­ted to the strategy of not shar­ing in­form­a­tion, in­stead pre­fer­ring to use what we find to bet­ter climb. Well, its not like any­thing is forced and in the end it de­pends on how you play your save, so on you go!

14. (+3) hot­ab1 (hotab) - ee67808:

I have a vague feel­ing he should­n’t have been in when I first in­cluded him but well, now he’s in for sure.
Right now he’s the player with the second highest T4 and a pretty de­cent the­ory dis­tri­bu­tion - but his T5 looks like it could help him get even higher.
I’ll be in­ter­ested to see if he can keep up the pace or if push­ing T6 will cost him at some point. Note: al­ways push T6.

15. (-4) An­thari­on1988 (An­tharion) - ee67808:

The ori­ginal le­gend, long­time #1, cre­ator of the ori­ginal tau sim­u­lator and sadly not that act­ive any­more (both in the game and on the server), though we can still see him (and he’s cer­tainly not given up^^) from time to time.

It was a sur­prise but a wel­come one to see him back in the Top 10 at some point and even stay­ing for a bit! Now the com­pet­i­tion sadly got him but no reason to give him up.
Go­gogo!!!

Look­ing good! Him gain­ing places is giv­ing me joy! Well, I jinxed it. Sorry…

16. (+2) In­tel­lec­tu­al­Power­112 (NG­Z001) - ee67739:

Over a year ago he already had an hon­our­able men­tion. I wrote:
Let’s hope at some point in the fu­ture he can enter the rank­ings to join his friends on the lead­er­board (XLII already showed the way^^)!

He was far be­hind but with his activ­ity and pas­sion I’m not sur­prised to fi­nally see him enter the Top 20!
Back then he star­ted to ap­pear a bit more in the server and es­pe­cially for cus­tom the­or­ies. He cer­tainly con­tin­ued this trend.
Very im­press­ive minigamer, second to prob­ably none, hav­ing passed 1 bil­lion minigame stars by a fair mar­gin.
Equally im­press­ive in cus­tom the­or­ies, second only to Playspout and not by much.
Here is one player I can see rise more and more!

17. (-3) har­u­maki200 (har­u­maki) - ee67732:

So far with some of the low­est amount of Dis­cord mes­sages but at least still here^^ Cus­tom the­or­ies re­quired some posts but that was it some­what sadly.

Activ­ity on the server is no where equi­val­ent to activ­ity in-game and this held true here very well. For a while they had stopped play­ing com­pletely but now grind­ing is back on the menu! Wel­come back! Oth­ers grind as well though, so maybe that was a short-lived re­appear­ance?

18. (new) Ara­mak­iSH (?) - ee67657:

An­other new entry! And an­other mys­tery per­son. I know they were already some­what close be­fore stop­ping to up­date f(t) for over 2 months. I guess this is also a way to re­appear!
Out­side of this I have no idea about them at all. Maybe they’ll show up some­where (or some­body else knows more). For now it’s just ad­mir­ing the rise and see if it will be a fu­ture prob­lem to write about^^

19. (-6) TRE­DEC42 (XLII) - ee67608:

I don’t even know where to start but he’s do­ing amaz­ing in-game and out of the game! Rising more and more thanks to his CT prowess (in ab­so­lute val­ues cur­rently #2), ori­ginal the­ory push­ing, the newly reached in­sane 1e9 stars and lots of push­ing. To add to that he’s a minigame re­cord hunter (hav­ing passed 1 bil­lion minigame stars), sim pro­gram­mer, CT bal­an­cer, helper and very act­ive on the server!

I was really happy to see him enter the Top 10 for a rank­ing and not only for a short time! I heard he’s ready to cash in and start the hunt, so my ex­pect­a­tions are high^^ I should not have said that, now I jinxed it. Or maybe he’s just tak­ing his time^^ We’ll see…
Note: don’t overdo T6.

20. (-4) Melv0r (Melv0r) - ee67599:

I have a vague feel­ing he should’ve been already in a month be­fore I in­cluded him, con­sid­er­ing my notes on f(t) but hey, he’s here now!
It has been a while since he was seen on the server, with mes­sages dat­ing back to 2021 mak­ing him an old vet­eran but still be­low a hun­dred mes­sages. But what mat­ters for this rank­ing is not activ­ity in the server (though still nice) but activ­ity in the game. And there he fought his way up and up un­til he got into this pres­ti­gi­ous list.
Now it’s time to see if he can hold his place! Close shave but for now he stays.

Some enter the list and so some have to leave the list as well. Here are our fallen fel­lows from this month:

21. (-2) d4N­f6Bg5 (d4N­f6Bg5) - ee67489:

He’s been on the server and the rank­ings hunt for a while. A long while ac­tu­ally. Ac­cord­ing to him surely every day he was­n’t in the Top 20 too long.

If you know chess nota­tion you can de­duce from his name he’s a chess player (you can go as far as al­low him his self-pro­claimed ex­pert status given his 2500+ lichess rat­ing^^). As I’m something of a chess player my­self I already like that^^

Be­ing driven by his de­sire to fi­nally reach the rank­ings but hindered by com­pet­i­tion, long times for small gains and not much de­sire to ac­tu­ally cash in on the act­ives, he de­cided to do a first here at the top (at least as far as we know): he split his saves. One of them is go­ing for the long haul and the other - this one - got the the­ory auto­mator run­ning 24/​7 for the short-term gain.
It is time to re­peat a pre­vi­ous state­ment:
This can work but for now he dropped out un­til his cash-in will hap­pen. With the power of act­ive the­or­ies and ac­cel I ex­pect him to be back.
Still to ful­fill: The comeback took longer than ex­pec­ted but here he is. I can’t help but say: birrel69 is still quite a bit ahead ;)

22. (-2) Juan­nTitor (JuanT­itor) - ee67482:

On the server it looks like a lot of bot com­mands lately but from time to time he pops up for some other com­ment.

For quite a while he’s fight­ing really hard for his place in the rank­ing and has been out and back again. His comebacks must be a re­cord, right?

Oh no, Top 20 streak is over! Time for a comeback then? Yes, it was comeback time! The el­ev­ator down was taken but never gonna give him up^^

1. (on iOS) neasi_cz (neasi) - ee67954:

A not that new face any­more on the top of the iOS lead­er­board! Hav­ing over­taken Phask and fi­nally get­ting to rank 1 after a long hunt, he’s fast in­creased his lead.
He is not that act­ive on the server but not un­known either. Maybe we’ll see him more in the fu­ture?
It might be pos­sible we have in him some­body who is ready to chal­lenge the es­tab­lished over­all Top 10 hold by An­droid play­ers, though it is still to early to say that. For now he climbed to #12 on the com­bined lead­er­board, which sees him get­ting closer one spot at a time!

2. (on iOS) Phask (Phask) - ee67393:

He was the long­time leader on the iOS lead­er­board and ac­tu­ally in the Top 20 over­all if com­bined. For quite some time it looked like he ac­tu­ally might be pretty close to the Top 10 on An­droid but lately he fell pretty hard, even los­ing the #1 spot for iOS.
This trend con­tin­ued and for the first time in a long while Phask is out, “only” be­ing #23 on An­droid (or #24 when in­clud­ing neasi). I won­der if I have to take him out soon?
He’s also on the server, though his act­ive times are some months ago. Also known as the cre­ator of the first Tau data col­lec­tion sheet.

And in the end it is of course time for the “real” hon­our­able men­tion (please nom­in­ate someone with a reason for fu­ture in­clu­sion of play­ers if you have some­body in mind) as neasi_cz and Phask are tech­nic­ally in the Top 20 rank­ings:

843. Axis­s3200 (Axiss) - ee55185:

This month it is shout-out time for the speedrun­ners (and Dis­cord en­thu­si­asts)! Or rather: an un­ex­pec­ted speedrun for the most part. Axiss reached ee50000 f(t) in a nice time of 69 days, mostly not even know­ing he was on such a re­cord time.
This on its own is already im­press­ive but des­pite start­ing with the the­ory auto­mator avail­able, he de­cided con­sciously against it be­cause “it drained the fun”. Turns out: be­ing act­ive with mak­ing a good ef­fort on cus­tom the­or­ies does get you go­ing pretty fast. With this con­straint he has no one above him and with TA only rus (the in­ventor) sur­passes him. Well, for all known and proven runs at least (come out and show off^^).
In the end of course any­body has their own playstyle but hav­ing so much fun you turn the idle game into an act­ive game de­serves a pat on the back and a men­tion here!
And I have to say: be­ing an act­ive mem­ber (with an av­er­age of 30 mes­sages per day) on the Dis­cord server helps as well :)

A fi­nal note: there is one player in the Top 20, who is cur­rently con­sidered to not be le­git des­pite not hav­ing a crazy score. So un­til proven oth­er­wise, they won’t be in­cluded in this rank­ing.
Some more blatantly ob­vi­ous ones (re­gard­less of there in­tent) in the Top 4 with their 74000 save (which can­not be reached yet) are as usu­ally ex­cluded from the list.

As it turned out to be quite the un­der­tak­ing to write this month edi­tion (be­cause of other com­mit­ments and be­cause it takes some time), I did­n’t man­age to pub­lish it on time (hope­fully un­der­stand­able when I say I was close to 15 hours away from home and not ready to fin­ish it the day it cov­ers the rank­ings). Re­gard­less I took the f(t) scores on the end of June, so it is still fine I hope!