This is a relaunch of a previous competition, [Conway's Reverse Game of Life](https://www.kaggle.com/c/conway-s-reverse-game-of-life/overview), with the following changes:
1. The grid size is larger (25 vs. 25) and the grid wraps around from top to bottom and left to right
2. Submissions are solved forward by the appropriate number of steps, so that _any_ correct starting solution will achieve a maximum score. This [article](http://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2013/08/07/conways-game-of-life/) contains the stepping function that is used for this competition.

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** A lot has changed since the original competition was launched 6 years ago. With the change from "exact starting point" to  "_any_ correct starting point", it is possible to get a perfect score. We just don't know how difficult that will be. Use it as a fun learning experience, _**and don't spoil it for others by posting perfect solutions!**_

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The Game of Life is a cellular automaton created by mathematician John Conway in 1970. The game consists of a board of cells that are either on or off. One creates an initial configuration of these on/off states and observes how it evolves. There are four simple rules to determine the next state of the game board, given the current state:

- **Overpopulation:** if a living cell is surrounded by more than three living cells, it dies.
- **Stasis:** if a living cell is surrounded by two or three living cells, it survives.
- **Underpopulation:** if a living cell is surrounded by fewer than two living cells, it dies.
- **Reproduction:** if a dead cell is surrounded by exactly three cells, it becomes a live cell.

These simple rules result in many interesting behaviors and have been the focus of a large body of mathematics. As [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life) states</p>

```
Ever since its publication, Conway's Game of Life has attracted much interest, because of the surprising ways in which the patterns can evolve. Life provides an example of emergence and self-organization. It is interesting for computer scientists, physicists, biologists, biochemists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, generative scientists and others to observe the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules. The game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counter-intuitive notion that "design" and "organization" can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer. For example, philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has used the analogue of Conway's Life "universe" extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe.
```

The emergence of order from simple rules begs an interesting question&#8212;_what happens if we set time backwards?_

This competition is an experiment to see if machine learning (or optimization, or any method) can predict the game of life in reverse. Is the chaotic start of Life predictable from its orderly ends? We have created many games, evolved them, and provided only the end boards. You are asked to predict the starting board that resulted in each end board.

> **This is a Code Competition. Refer to [Code Requirements](https://www.kaggle.com/c/conways-reverse-game-of-life-2020/overview/code-requirements) for details.**