Despite the relative simplicity of its components, a glider synthesis for the weekender had been elusive since its discovery. A weekender synthesis was completed on January 25, 2015, 15 years after its discovery (and coincidentally, on a weekend).[2] On September 26, 2015, Chris Cain announced a p444 weekender gun based on a 79-glider synthesis, as well as a p451/p457+ glider-to-weekender converter.[3]
Tagalongs
On April 27, 2000, Stephen Silver found a tagalong for a pair of weekenders, as shown below.
On December 6, 2020, winstax found a small period-21 tagalong for a single weekender, which in its simplest phase consists entirely of two R-pentomino descendants.[4][5] The spaceship was found using a combination of ikpx2 and apgsearch, with partial results from the former being inputted into the latter via ikpx2's "standard input" feature, with the goal of searching higher-period spaceships and puffers.
A beehive puffer based on this spaceship was found the same day, seemingly independently by iNoMed[6] and GUYTU6J.[7] GUYTU6J also found a block puffer formed by adding a second weekender to the side of the p21 ship.[7] Both of these puffers can be either one- or two-sided. Various glider rakes have also been constructed.[8]
Goldtiger997 found that the p21 tagalong could be added to the weekender with six gliders,[9][5] while iNoMed found that each side could be turned into a beehive puffer with two gliders.[10][5] Finally, gooddogtyson and Blinkerspawn found that the p21 ship could be converted both to and from a puffer with just one glider each way, on each side.[11][12]
