Craft a single regex that catches all the green words, skips all the red ones, then shrink it under par.
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How to play
You get two word lists: must-match (green) and must-not-match (red). Type one regular expression that matches every green word and none of the reds. The words light up live as you type. Once it separates them, shorten your pattern to beat the par length.
Your pattern is tested against each word; add anchors yourself if you need them
Match all greens, reject all reds, then golf the length down
Score rewards a short pattern that comes in under par
Controls
Desktop: type your pattern in the input and press Enter or Submit; Reveal shows an example solution
Phone & tablet: tap the input and type with the on-screen keyboard
Game modes
Difficulty: Easy, Medium or Hard word sets
Daily for a shared puzzle, Practice for an endless stream
Tips & strategy
Hunt for a substring or character class the greens share and the reds lack, often two or three characters is enough
Reveal gives a working example; treat its length as the target to undercut
What you'll learn
Pattern Hunter is regex golf, a code-golf puzzle about expressive, minimal pattern matching.
For parents & teachers: concise, expressive pattern matching.
About Pattern Hunter
Pattern Hunter is regex golf: a code-golf puzzle about expressive, minimal pattern matching. It is an original, free browser game built in-house for PlayPendium.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.