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/straw$/;                     # (3,5,5)

/\d+safety\d+/;               # (6,6,2,7)

/^\@[67]+$/;                  # (10,2,2,5,3,6)

/(my |the high)way/;          # (2,3,2,3,7)

/(Thomas|Richard|Harold)/g;   # (5,3,4,3,5)

my $mouth =~ s/\b\w+\b//g;    # (4,3,5,3,2,2,5)

s/it// || s/it/$&/;           # (4,2,2,5,2)

assert(/(way.*){2}way/);      # (6,6,1,5,3)

s/lehill/untain/;             # (4,1,8,3,2,1,8)
Bass
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3 Answers3

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/straw$/; # (3,5,5)

The final straw.

/\d+safety\d+/; # (6,6,2,7)

There's safety in numbers.

/^\@[67]+$/; # (10,2,2,5,3,6)

?????????? is at sixes and sevens. [EDIT: "Everything," courtesy of Phylyp.]

/(my |the high)way/; # (2,3,2,3,7)

My way or the highway.

/(Thomas|Richard|Harold)/g; # (5,3,4,3,5)

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry.

my $mouth =~ s/\b\w+\b//g; # (4,3,5,3,2,2,5)

Took the words right out of my mouth.

s/it// || s/it/$1/; # (4,2,2,5,2)

Take it or leave it.

assert(/(way.*){2}way/); # (6,6,1,5,3)

There's always a third way.

s/lehill/untain/; # (4,1,8,3,2,1,8)

Make a mountain out of a molehill.

noedne
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  • From Phylyp's answer, your missing word could be 'rirelguvat', as in 'rirelguvat vf ng fvkrf naq friraf'. – Keyur PATEL May 29 '18 at 08:20
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    @Phylyp Thanks for fixing my disregard for the enumeration. – noedne May 29 '18 at 08:20
  • @KeyurPATEL I considered that but I wasn't sure it was still a common phrase with that word added. I guess it does fit though. – noedne May 29 '18 at 08:21
  • To be honest, I'd only heard of the expression with the last four words, I had to resort to Google to get the first two words. – Phylyp May 29 '18 at 08:31
  • Yup, that's pretty much it. In retrospect, I probably should have done a couple of thing differently (e.g. the "everything" bit), and there's at least one obvious bug in my code, but looks like you managed to plow through all of that, and got everything correct. Nicely done! (All of you!) – Bass May 29 '18 at 09:08
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    @Bass I was very impressed with how well the clues fit. Most were obscured enough that merely glancing at the clue gave little insight, but reasoning about the regex would lead to saying the answer out loud and the wonderful "a-ha" moment. – noedne May 29 '18 at 09:25
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    I echo what noedne said, @Bass , a very nicely constructed puzzle. – Phylyp May 29 '18 at 12:39
  • Can you explain what are the numbers after the regexes are? It seems like the regexes themselves are sufficient to come up with the solutions? – Sweeper May 29 '18 at 14:13
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    @Sweeper, they are an extra hint, and they also make the answers more or less unique. I borrowed the format from crossword puzzles: the numbers indicate the letter count of each word in the answer. – Bass May 29 '18 at 14:54
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    @Sweeper I thought the first one was "the last straw" but the numbers make it clear it's "the final straw." – David Conrad May 29 '18 at 16:38
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    Another comment to say this was very enjoyable, thank you @Bass. The assert(/(way.*){2}way/); is the only one that felt a bit weird to me; while it technically fits, somehow it doesn't feel as elegant as the other ones. And, I think the one before that should be s/it// || s/(it)/$1/;, seeing the capture group reference without any captures confused me at first. – Sundar R May 29 '18 at 18:21
  • @sundar thanks, and I completely agree. The missing capture group is the obvious bug I was talking about in the comment above, replacing the $1 with $& was how I intended to fix it, but since it already got fixed by the solvers' excellent DWIM parsers, I left it as it is; now it kind of reflects the mouseover text in the original strip :-) – Bass May 29 '18 at 18:36
10

Partial answer 

/straw$/;                     # (3, 5, 5)

The final straw 

/^\@[67]+$/;                  # (10,2,2,5,3,6)

Everything is at sixes or sevens 

/(my |the high)way/;          # (2,3,2,3,7)

My way or the highway 

s/it// || s/it/$1/;           # (4,2,2,5,2)

Take it or leave it 

s/lehill/untain/;             # (4,1,8,3,2,1,8)

Make a mountain out of a molehill

Phylyp
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4

(Not sure about line 8)

1.

the final straw

2.

there's safety in numbers

3.

everything is at sixes and sevens

4.

my way or the highway

5.

every Tom, Rich and Harry

6.

took the words out of my mouth

7.

take it or leave it

8.

assert itself the right way (?)

9.

make a mountain of a molehill

PS. 8. (courtesy of @noedne)

there's always a third way

Nautilus
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  • I was wrong about 8. Thought "assert" was part of the saying. – Nautilus May 29 '18 at 17:58
  • In number 5, isn't Dick the more commonly used abbreviation for Richard? – Peter Taylor May 30 '18 at 11:39
  • I knew the idiom "every Tom, Dick and Harry", but I didn't know Dick was a diminutive of Richard, so I searched for "Rich" instead. – Nautilus May 30 '18 at 18:18
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    @Nautilus - I first recall my confusion when as a child I read Enid Blyton's Famous Five, and was confused when the character named Dick gave his name as Richard to an authority figure. Took me years to figure it out, in those pre-Internet days (my country doesn't use Western names). – Phylyp May 31 '18 at 15:22