So 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 would be to give a few clues that give you confidence on specific characters, that then let you lock in some other characters in other hints, and so on.
For instance, replacing `.*H.*V.*G.*` with `.{3}H.*V.*G.*` would go a long way because you could confidently place an `H`. And say that intersected with `(DI|NS|TH|OM)*` on the `H`, you could then place a `T` from the second clue because of what you learned from the first clue.
It could just be that I'm missing something or not as good at regex as I thought, and please let me know if that's the case. Either way though, when I'm trying a new kind of puzzle I'd like to feel like I made some sort of progress after trying for 5-10 minutes, and here 2 chars does not feel like progress.
I just completed it, and can say with certainty that it is solvable by only taking into consideration two constraints at any given time, with the exception of 3 at just one point early on (and they were the easier constraints in the puzzle). That being said, the nature of regex means you kind of need to jump around as far as which constraints you combine.
I don't doubt that, and I don't doubt it's a good puzzle, especially if you're already familiar with the format.
But since this is my first introduction to this kind of puzzle, I need some anchor points at the beginning so I feel like I have something to work off of.
I'm not even asking for a whole row, just an easier set of known chars at the start of the round so I have a hint at which of the 39 constraints I should start with.
To be honest I'm not even saying this puzzle should change so much as I am looking for a different puzzle to dip my toes.
I don't have any interest in starting the puzzle if I don't feel like I can put a foot down somewhere. It's like trying your first Minesweeper game, making two random clicks, and getting two `7`s. Where do you go from there? Or learning Sudoku from the hardest difficulty level, without having built up a library of patterns from the easier difficulties.
I did complete and enjoy it, but I'm both very competent with regex like you, but also big into sudoku variants (as in the youtube channel cracking the cryptic! [1]) so this felt like it was designed for me to enjoy. Considering it took me about half an hour, I'd expect someone who isn't into these kinds of odd puzzles already to basically have exactly your reaction.
I don't watch regularly (and I would consider myself a sudoku dabbler) but I've seen some Cracking the Cryptic videos in the past and enjoyed them greatly.
Yeah I definitely get that. I've never done a puzzle of this type before, but I have done a hell of a lot of logic puzzles (thanks to the Simon Tatham collection among others) so I was able to figure out a good attack vector. I agree, it wasn't easy to find where to start nor where to make progress in the beginning. Lots of data to ingest.
It's clearly in NP. One way to solve it is to order the squares in some order and combine all the NFAs in some nasty wreath product construction. Then we seek an accepting string. While this has an exponential state size blowup you may be able to construct lazily in the BFS and perhaps that keeps the complexity down.
Depends what you think N is doesn't it? What would be a variable parameter in this puzzle? The number of letters in the alphabet? The size of the regex expressions? The size of the board?
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.
There are actually four spaces that can be filled by accounting for only a single pattern. Two of those are at the end instead of the beginning.
I agree it definitely feels imposing when you first look at it, but stick with it. Look for spaces that have a very small set of possibilities, and then try to map out what neighboring spaces could have for each possibility. If you really feel stuck, take a screenshot and mark it up.
https://regexcrossword.com/ have a lot of great puzzles with a gentler learning curve but I liked the challenge of this one, so I think it would have spoiled the fun a bit for me.
I found other patterns that I thought were unsimplified, but (spoiler alert) in the end it turned out that all of the seemingly-unnecessary details were important for the solution! E.g.
[^C]*[^R]*
LOOKS unsimplified, but it actually means that if the string contains an R, the preceding characters CANNOT be C.
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.
No, (X|H|H|[^XH])*` or ([XHH]|[^XH])* would be equivalent to .*, but (XHH|[^XH])* requires that XHH appear consecutively in that order whenever they appear at all.
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 would be to give a few clues that give you confidence on specific characters, that then let you lock in some other characters in other hints, and so on.
For instance, replacing `.*H.*V.*G.*` with `.{3}H.*V.*G.*` would go a long way because you could confidently place an `H`. And say that intersected with `(DI|NS|TH|OM)*` on the `H`, you could then place a `T` from the second clue because of what you learned from the first clue.
It could just be that I'm missing something or not as good at regex as I thought, and please let me know if that's the case. Either way though, when I'm trying a new kind of puzzle I'd like to feel like I made some sort of progress after trying for 5-10 minutes, and here 2 chars does not feel like progress.