Can You Do the Regular Expression Crossword? [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

mikejuk writes "Programmers often say that regular expressions are fun ... but now they can be a whole lot of fun in a completely new way. Want to try your hand at a regular expression crossword? The idea is simple enough — create a crossword style puzzle with regular expressions are the 'clues.' In case you don't know what a regular expression is — it is a way of specifying what characters are allowed using wild-card characters and more. For example a dot matches any single character, an * any number of characters and so on. The regular expression crossword is more a sort of Sudoku puzzle than crossword however because the clues determine the pattern that the entries in a row have to satisfy. It also has to use a hexagonal grid to provide three regular expressions to control each entry. This particular regular expression crossword(pdf) was part of this year's MIT Mystery Hunt. This annual event is crammed with a collection of very difficult problems and the regular expression crossword, created by Dan Gulotta from an idea by Palmer Mebane, was just a small part of the whole — and yes there is a solution." http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png (http://twitter.com/home?status=Can+You+Do+the+Regular+Expression+Cros sword%3F%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F14Td0Jl) http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png (http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgames.slashdot.org%2Fsto ry%2F13%2F02%2F13%2F2346253%2Fcan-you-do-the-regular-expression-crossword%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Df acebook) http://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png (http://plus.google.com/share?url=http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/02/13/2346253/can-you-do-the-regular-expression-crossword?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=googleplus)

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