What would writing a solver for regex crosswords entail? Is it just a matter of constraint solving, and what would the running time be?
RegEx Crossword
141–150 of 160 posts
Re: RegEx Crossword
#142So many of these start or end with an `x*`, `(x|y)`, `[xy]` or `[^xy]` that I only see two characters I can fill in before I need to start looking at multiple constraints for the same cell and either doing combinatorics or guess-and-check. This might be fine for hard mode, but as someone who considers themselves a regexpert it's not very approachable as a first puzzle IMO. A more gradual introduction to the format wo…
I fully agree. I think it's a really interesting concept but it's missing a bit of game design skill so far.
I had the same experience when I tried it yesterday. There doesn't seem to be any good "starting point", like there is on a traditional crossword puzzle or sudoku.
I think from a game design perspective it is really interesting though: Like sudoku, this kind of puzzle gives you a wide range of options to archive different player experiences and difficulty levels: You can make easy levels by mostly using constant-width regexes and non-conditional letters and you can slowly increase the difficulty level by making regexes less constrained and more ambiguous. A designer could even craft specific "paths" through the puzzle by combining easy and hard regexes.
Finally, a designer could gradually introduce more complex regex features (or other patterns, like multiple constraints) over successive leves.
Re: RegEx Crossword
#143See also https://regexcrossword.com/ , which has been discussed a lot on HN.
I hate you. I've just spent there way more time than I'd want to admit
Re: RegEx Crossword
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can prefer to think of it as having all regexes have an implicit ^ and $ That is literally what is happening: https://github.com/Jimbly/regex-crossword/blob/master/crossw...
Not anymore, hah: https://github.com/Jimbly/regex-crossword/commit/0e603975f21...
Haha! Fantastic commit message
Re: RegEx Crossword
#14599pct of the challenge is counting the positions for things. Would be nice if they had a couple hand mande puzzles instead of random ones.
There is no way a puzzle with such a narrow solution path is anything but handmade.
Re: RegEx Crossword
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Official solution from the original author: https://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2013/coinheist.com/rubik/a_re...
Oooh, I was stuck because I was insisting on `. (1)(2)(3)(4)\4\3\2\1. ` having the middle eight characters mirror each other, which results in a clear contradiction with a few of the crosses. Thanks for posting the answers. I think I'm done working on it for now, but that one was really bothering me.
This is how I interpret it, too. What am I missing?
Re: RegEx Crossword
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or if the string contains a C, a subsequent character can't be an R? Doesn't it really just mean a string can't contain a C followed by an R?
Yes, those are three ways of saying the same thing. :)
Not really. Maybe I'm being overly pedantic, but my point was that the first two ways of describing it are overly specific and don't include all the strings that can be matched. Only the third option really describes all the possibilities.
Re: RegEx Crossword
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oooh, I was stuck because I was insisting on `. (1)(2)(3)(4)\4\3\2\1. ` having the middle eight characters mirror each other, which results in a clear contradiction with a few of the crosses. Thanks for posting the answers. I think I'm done working on it for now, but that one was really bothering me.
This is how I interpret it, too. What am I missing?
Because of the ".*" on either end, it's just having a sequence of 8 somewhere that are mirrored, could be the first 8 or last 8, not strictly the middle 8.
Re: RegEx Crossword
#149Re: RegEx Crossword
#150This was awesome. I loved it so much.
Personally I'd even pay good money for a series of these style of puzzles.