4 ms·
Brilliant. I wonder how it was made? I solved this in about 1.5 hours by starting at the top left, entering any string that satisfied at least one condition, t
by jl6 6y ago
Brilliant. I wonder how it was made?
I solved this in about 1.5 hours by starting at the top left, entering any string that satisfied at least one condition, then moving on to the next condition and “fixing up” any previous entries. I was fearful that I might arrive at a nearly correct solution that I would have to massively backtrack from, but it didn’t happen - I only needed a few short backtracks. I think the large number of constraints helps a lot.
- schoen 6y agoSee this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26439598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26439598 for proper credit to the original author (and place of publication).
- mypalmike 6y agoSpent a similar amount of time... Ended up with a "solution" that breaks 1 constraint. Must have erred somewhere, but backtracking is only leading to other 1-broken constraint outcomes. Sigh.
- schoen 6y agoOfficial solution from the original author: https://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2013/coinheist.com/rubik/a_regular_crossword/answer/index.html https://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2013/coinheist.com/rubik/a_re...
- lkbm 6y agoOooh, 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.
- darkerside 6y agoThis is how I interpret it, too. What am I missing?
- Jimbly 6y agoBecause 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.
- lkbm 6y agoYeah, sorry for the bad formatting. I probably should've taken the time to make it not markdownify the asterisks. Without them, it is mirroring the middle eight.
- darkerside 6y agoI misread the parent post and I was interpreting the clue correctly after all. Thanks for helping clarify. It was a fun puzzle.
- mypalmike 6y agoWhat's the fun in that? :-P Thanks though. I tried again on my laptop and got it - was a bit easier with a larger display than on my phone.