We have a new CT!!

Nope, you did not mis­hear (or mis­read?), Gilles has blessed us once again with a new CT, this time, only 1: Riemann Zeta func­tion! This new CT is top­ping T8 in terms of graph chaos, and mile­stone swap­ping (with the most act­ive, and most point­less MS I’ve even seen).
This new CT has only been out for a bit, but the lead­er­boards are already on fire, with taus near­ing quad­ruple di­gits! These new CTs are fast!

With new CTs come new strategies, and I have to say, RZ is my fa­vour­ite the­ory by far (not biased, trust).

But it’s not all sun­shine and rain­bows. With the new CT came a new bug, al­lowed people to com­plete, yes com­plete, the the­ory in van­ish­ingly short amounts of times. Thank­fully, the bug has been fixed, but lead­er­board cleanup is still go­ing on

And of course, to sim­u­lated this new the­ory comes a brand new shiny the­ory sim! This im­prove­ment on XLIIs was no small task, amaz­ing job to [In­sert CT cre­at­ors here]. I’m no coder, but even I can see the work and ded­ic­a­tion that must have gone into mak­ing it. For all the com­munity, we thank you!

And fi­nally, with the new CT and the tau ex­plo­sion we have broken the fi­nal di­git bar­rier with top play­ers reach­ing 100k f(t) and into the 6 di­gits. Con­grat­u­la­tions to every­one who made it all the way up there!

That’s it for the news this month, onto the rank­ings:

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.

Just as the lead­er­boards looked like they were be­gin­ning to settle, we have a new CT, 300 more tau, and a whole load of mixups

Novem­ber 2024 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!), data col­lec­ted Janu­ary 1st:

1. (+0) birrel69 (birrel) - ee102965:

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, 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! It’s been forever since the last up­date, and still, he re­fuses to di­vulge any­thing. His strategies seems to be work­ing though, be­cause he is on fire

After be­ing on the edge of the Top 10, he has turned on over­drive. Scary stuff, with no end in sight so far. He’s ce­men­ted him­self solidly in 1st place, and there’s no end in sight. Still go­ing strong, will he ever run out of steam? at some point we gotta take him down from the lead­er­board cause this guy it was to hax

(also on a more ser­i­ous note, some­body should check him for the RZ glitch)

2. (+2) Vin­tage­Sur­fer­56606 (kinger55) - ee101600:

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 (no more tau up­dates it seems…) but he’s a force on the lead­er­board for sure. He cer­tainly figured out CTs and firmly planted him­self near the top

He has dis­tanced him­self from the rest of the com­pet­i­tion, and is speedrun­ning his way up to the top. Now in 2nd place, how much can he keep rising?

3. (+3) Ab­soP­erf (Ab­soP­erf) - ee101523:

This time I can only say that they hovered near the Top 20 for a long time. Act­ive play with lots of pushes seems to fi­nally be the re­cipe for pro­gress.

They rose up 11 ranks, more un­known play­ers tak­ing to the top. Will they stop? Will they keep rising? They wil keep rising as the shoot all the way up to 3rd place!

There is no server pres­ence, so noth­ing more to say so far. Well, it looks like I was miss­ing something! Ab­soP­erf has blessed us with their pres­ence on the server (and their dis­tri­bu­tion). So, hi! I look for­ward to ac­tu­ally meet­ing you!

4. (+1) Ei­jaRisen (?) - ee101339:

This new entry is not stop­ping!

I’ve never heard of them be­fore, but clearly they had some good CTs to shoot this far up. They seem to be on a steady rise, where they’ll go next, who knows?

But wherever it is, it’s up!

5. (+3) In­tel­lec­tu­al­Power­112 (NG­Z001) - ee101301:

Over a year ago he already had an hon­our­able men­tion. Afuro 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 we wer­en’t 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’ve seen rise more and more, with the Top 10 only the be­gin­ning! “Mr. Op­timal” is still on the climb, faster than ever, mak­ing it all the way (back up) to top 5.

6. (+5) colinc719 (?) - ee100899:

A long-time mem­ber of the top 20, he has been in the top 20 since 2022 (!), even reach­ing the top 10 on a reg­u­lar basis. We can­not even know much 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 made clear Top 10 was just a step on the way. They’ve gone up, they’ve gone down, but they rode the new CTs all the way up to 6th!

7. (+3) nubestlol {changed} (nubest) - ee100687:

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/​owo 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 stronger then ever too.

Po­ten­tially her com­pet­it­ors are too act­ive now, though she is still pretty high up. Maybe its the cat emo­jis^^ Or the elab­or­ate strategies which are surely not act­ive be­cause nub only idles, sure.

8. (-1) Reck­on­Crew (Reck­on­Crew) - ee100572:

They have all their mes­sages on the server from a single day about 45 months ago, which is an achieve­ment in it­self I guess^^

Ac­tu­ally can­not find them any­more, maybe be­cause of the Dis­cord name up­date? Or maybe be­cause Dis­cord some­times does­n’t want to ac­tu­ally search.

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 :)

9. (-7) Playspout {changed} (Playspout) - ee100353:

If you ever looked at the re­cord sheet you should know him be­cause he’s lit­er­ally on top every­where there (well, ex­cept ap­par­ently the ori­ginal the­or­ies on main save).

Also pretty act­ive here on the server, 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.

He seems to be avoid­ing up­dat­ing for now, and it’s so strange to see him so low. Where will he end up?

10. (-1) Melv0r (Melv0r) - ee100111:

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.

Can he hold his place? Well, he’s do­ing a lot bet­ter then that! Rising up by 5 he has entered, and held, the top 10! Wel­come, and con­grat­u­la­tions!

11. (new) Black­Seal94 - ee100050:

Shoot­ing up from a pre­vi­ously-stable po­s­i­tion just un­der the top 20, this is one new player whom I was sur­prised was not on the top 20 within the last year (like ser­i­ously I was con­fused about why I could­n’t find him)

He is the mas­ter of both T3 AND T1, be­ing num­ber one on the lead­er­board with an in­cred­ible 800 tau for T3, and 750 for T1. Not con­tent with just those 2, and is on the lead­er­boards for many other the­or­ies. His playstyle of play­ing the the­or­ies and strategies you are pas­sion­ate about may have held him back be­fore, but this the­ory mas­ter has claimed his spot on top!

12. (+4) drag­me­ho­menow (?) - ee99958:

This new player has de­cided he likes top 20, and has settled down at 16th12th - though with lead­er­boards this wild, who knows where they’ll end up?

13. (+11) hot­ab1 (hotab) - ee99900:

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 one player lis­ted on all 8 main save the­or­ies on the re­cord sheet (wow).

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 the­or­ies. Wait, that seems pretty ob­vi­ous.

Is he able to keep it up? He’s slip­ping and he fell, but he’s right back and stronger then ever, with a mon­strous +11 rise!

14. (+6) SnaekySnacks (SnaekySnacks) - ee99291:

Had a hard time not to think of sneaky but okay^^ Maybe the most act­ive per­son on the server [cita­tion needed]. Also known for his con­tri­bu­tions to the guide and an­swer­ing ques­tions seem­ingly every­where and everytime^^ Due to his work he’s been less act­ive lately (which seems still pretty act­ive to me). You’re do­ing a great job though! Same goes for his own cus­tom the­ory idea (EF) which got im­ple­men­ted with the help of pea­nut and XLII.

Sadly, Snaeky has been out of the rank­ings for a while, fall­ing back in 2023. When he fell, Afuro wrote: “And with other things hap­pen­ing, he fi­nally fell out… No worry, you’re still on of the greats and maybe he’ll be back!”, and it looks like he was right! Wel­come back to top 20 Snaeky, we’ve missed you!

And not just that, with his idles fin­ished and act­ives primed for the kill, Snaeky is swiftly mak­ing their way back to the top. He has made his de­clar­a­tion: “Im probly go­ing to end up in top 10 soon­ish tbh, by the end of the year”, and look­ing at him, I don’t doubt it!

15. (-2) It­s­Not­Me109 (?) - 99192:

Was the 2nd new per­son on this rank­ing in the top 10. Now, fallen out. Where they will end up next. Nobody knows.

In­ter­est­ing Fact: He’s the only per­son to not only have split saves, but also ap­par­ently split ac­counts with It­s­Not­Me108 ap­pear­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing last month and con­fus­ing the hell out of me.

Again, no dis­cord pres­ence, so not much to say.

16. (-1) d4N­f6Bg5 (d4N­f6Bg5) - ee98856:

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.

Not just con­tent with main lead­er­boards, he is prov­ing to the a force to be reckoned with in sea­sons. He took an early lead and won the whole event! d4, clearly not a player to be reckoned with. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, on his main save, his act­ives are lag­ging be­hind, and his rank­ings are tak­ing the hit. Birrel has turned to other things, can d4 keep up this playstyle?

Well, sea­sons are over, so d4 can turn his sea­son en­ergy to the “real” lead­er­board (not to say sea­sons aren’t real!), and get ready to rise some ranks (or more likely sleep). Looks like he chose to sleep, but he’s stay­ing quite stable so far.

17. (new) Sir­lonnes (???) - ee98782:

An­other new per­son. I thought i was done with those. Wel­come!

18. (new) ser­aphya (???) - ee98744:

An­other one? Wel­come to you too!

19. (new) Muddy­Jack­et4786 - ee98739:

(see above) nah I would­n’t do that to you. Wel­come as well!

20. (-1) xtevenx3 (Xteven) - ee98691:

Fi­nally someone on this dis­cord for once. It’s look­ing like his self de­scribed playstyle of full idle might be hurt­ing him. Or it was sea­sons, of which he was also a com­pet­itor. Hanging on by a thread, Xteven is­n’t quite out yet! go­go­go­gogo!!

With so many new play­ers en­ter­ing the list, some have to leave the list as well. Here are our fallen fel­lows from this month.

25. (-22) Fi­nalul­tima (Fi­nalul­tima) - ee98344:

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 he has more than closed the gap! An ab­so­lutely in­cred­ible feat mak­ing it all the way up here, even if you have fallen a little.

He seems quite ce­men­ted here, but you can never dis­count the com­pet­i­tion here in the top 20. - Eyland­ing, 1 month ago

God I was wrong. This is why you can never trust pre­dic­tions. Top 1 by a long shot, and now down to 25 (likely as a res­ult of not up­dat­ing)

(de­leted) it­s­not­me108 (?) - ee0:

Hmm, I won­der who this per­son it. I won­der, is it It­s­Not­Me109 do­ing a little save scum­ming?

Re­gard­less, it’s not ex­actly fair to every­one to have one per­son count twice, so I’m mov­ing every­one up one place, for the real top 20. And there he goes. Bai!

27. (-13) Al­bere­in­stein3456789 - ee96049:

3000 f(t) in one month? That’s gotta be some kind of re­cord. Shoot­ing up from be­low 30th, he’s ce­men­ted him­self right into 14th, and then fallen back down to 27. Bye!

23. (-6) Up­Artz (?) - ee95932:

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!

And it seems they are here to stay. Des­pite the en­tire lead­er­board mov­ing around them, they stayed con­stant in Top 10 (thank god). Looks like this player is here to stay.

Oh, oh no. Looks like my pre­dic­tions were wrong… oh, very wrong…

We hope to see you again!

26. (-8) Hu­mong­ous­Troll273 (?) - ee95721:

Just barely scrap­ing into 20 top last month, he rises to 18th, and down to 26. Those are all the up­dates so my work here is done

1. (on iOS) neasi_cz (neasi) - ee100497:

5th on com­bined LB (-1)
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.
Well, he man­aged to do it, and would be #4 (well now #5) in the an­droid lb. Con­grats on reach­ing top 10! (and rep­res­ent­ing iOS play­ers).

I have to say: I’m root­ing for him!

2. (+1) (on iOS) アケローン川に住む入道坊主 (?) - ee99816

15th on com­bined LB (+5)
There is­n’t much I can say ex­cept he has been play­ing catch-up since quite a while un­til fi­nally get­ting on here - and up to 2nd (!)

Afur­o’s glor­i­ous Ja­pan­ese skills were enough to read the first part as “Acheron river”. Seems the rest means a (young?) monk liv­ing there, ac­cord­ing to his re­search.

Or I could wait for someone to provide a bet­ter trans­la­tion: Nyūdō monk who lives on the Acheron River (no guar­an­tee for be­ing right).

3. (new) (on iOS) [I’m not typ­ing that] (?) - ee99763

16th on com­bined LB
An­other new per­son? Wel­come to the top!

4. (-2) (on iOS) Bobbly­ben - ee99733

17th on com­bined LB

We’ve seen him be­fore, but we just about char­ac­ter­ized him as le­git enough to be on this lead­er­board. A suf­ferer of the 16x CT glitch, it could be ar­gued that his save is in­valid, but it has been fixed, and it’s not like he could’ve pre­ven­ted it any­way. After rising up to 2nd, he’s slipped down to 4th. Still in top 20 though, keep go­ing!

If you want to ig­nore him, you can, but at least in my opin­ion he de­serves this spot in the top 20. Wel­come Bobbly­ben to the top of iOS

5. (new) (on iOS) Jooo1265 (jooo) - ee99100

19th on com­bined LB

Old face, new LB po­s­i­tion! He’s been high on iOS for a while, and this iOS break into the top 20 seems to keep on go­ing. Jooo has been play­ing the long game and it has paid off. It’s mad (and amaz­ing) see­ing this many iOS play­ers in the top 20, but wel­come to top 20! \n

They have also been really help­ful by keep­ing track of top 50 f(t) rank­ings on a daily basis (yes, every day they up­date their spread­sheet), so huge kudos to them (we’ve been able to track po­ten­tial cheat­ers so much bet­ter)!

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 the iOS play­ers are tech­nic­ally in the Top 20 rank­ings (or rep­res­ent the top of the iOS lead­er­board):

385. propfeds (Prop) - ee78215:

As said be­fore we have been blessed with a new CT, and this is the per­son we have to thank!

This CT jug­ger­naut is seem­ingly an ex­pert at mak­ing these, cre­at­ing RZ (al­most) all on his own (okay who am I kid­ding). They did the re­search, cod­ing, and bal­an­cing re­quired on the jour­ney of CT cre­ation and has given us all a won­der­ful new cus­tom the­ory for us all to en­joy!

If any­one de­serves an hon­our­able men­tion, it’s them. Keep up the amaz­ing work, and I hope to play an­other one of your CTs soon! (Keep your eyes peeled for Lem­ma’s Garden full re­lease maybe some­time)