As an indirect result of contemplating Jim Propp's Mathematical Enchantments https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/avoiding-chazakah-with-the-prou... I became distracted (the way one does) into examining the sequence of gaps between repetitions of a given word w in the Thue-Morse sequence. Obviously the gap sequence will vary according to w . But it turns out that every such sequence is related by linear transformation and index shift to one of just three particular cases: w = 0, 01, 010 --- see for example sect. 4 of Lubomira Balkova, Edita Pelantov a, Wolfgang Steiner "Return words in the Thue-Morse and other sequences" https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/90970/filename/BPS.pdf Initial segments, compressed into infinite words --- Thue-Morse: 01101001 10010110 10010110 01101001 10010110 01101001 01101001 10010110 ... Gaps w = 0 : 21020121 01202102 01202101 21020121 01202101 21020120 21020121 01202102 ... Gaps w = 01 : 11201102 11202110 11201102 11011202 11201102 11202110 11202112 01102110 ... Gaps w = 010 (halved): 21032301 21030123 21032301 23210301 21032301 21030123 21030121 03230123 ... From case w = 0 , the gap sequence for w = 1 follows by transposing 0 with 2 : which may be considered linear S_n -> 2 - S_n , or else the limit of shifts n -> n + 2^k for k = 0,1,2,... Either way, the result commences 0 1 2 0 2 1 0 1 2 1 0 2 0 1 2 1 ... 'Ang abaht --- < = > < > = < = > = < > < = > = ... --- haven't we seen something very like this somewhere else recently? So it would be reasonable to expect the other two cases to have some simple relation to Thue-Morse as well. Yeah, right --- the most concise (conjectural) recurrences I have been able to come up with for S_n so far are the following horrors. Given index n > 0 , for 0 < n <= 8 , set explicitly S_1,...,S_8 = 1, 1, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 2 for w = 01 , 2, 1, 0, 3, 2, 3, 0, 1 for w = 010 ; define k, n', n" via 4 n' < n <= 8 n' = 2^k ; n" = (n' - (-1)^k)/3 for w = 01 , (n' + 2(-1)^k)/3 for w = 010 ; then for n > 8 , S_n = S_(n - 4*n') for 4 n' < n <= 6 n' , S_(n - 3*n' + n") for 6 n' < n <= 7 n' , S_(n - 5*n' + n") for 7 n' < n <= 8 n' . Fred Lunnon