The Universal Crossword has a set of guidelines for crossword puzzle submissions.

In this challenge we are going to be concerned with their rules for hidden word themes. A hidden word clue consists of a clue and a word. It can either be a "word break" or a "bookend".

For a word break the word must not appear as a contiguous substring of the clue, but if all the spaces are removed from the clue, then it is a contiguous substring with a non-empty prefix and suffix. Some examples:

• POOR HOUSE, RHO: is valid. Solution: POOR HOUSE
• IMPROPER USE, PERUSE: is not valid. It appears separated by a space: IMPROPER USE, but the suffix is empty.
• SINGLE TRACK, SINGLET: is not valid. It appears separated by a space: SINGLE TRACK, but the prefix is empty.
• PLANE TICKET, ET: is not valid. The word appears separated by a space: PLANE TICKET, but it also appears contiguously: PLANE TICKET.

For a bookend the word must appear as a combination of a non-empty prefix and a non-empty suffix of the clue, but is not a contiguous substring. Bookends may span word breaks, but are not required to. The clue must not appear as a contiguous substring to be a valid bookend.

• SINGLE TRACK, SICK: is valid. Solution: SINGLE TRACK
• YOU MUST DOT YOUR IS AND CROSS YOUR TS, YURTS: is valid. Solution: YOU MUST DOT YOUR IS AND CROSS YOUR TS
• STAND CLEAR, STAR: is valid, even though there are two solutions: STAND CLEAR and STAND CLEAR
• START A WAR, STAR: is not valid since the word is a prefix of the clue.
• TO ME, TOME: is valid. It can be split multiple ways including ways with empty prefixes and suffixes.
• TWO BIRDS WITH TWO STONE, TONE: is not valid since the word is a suffix of the clue
• IMPROPER USE, PERUSE: is not valid. It appears as a suffix and is not a contiguous substring: IMPROPER USE, but the prefix needs to be non empty for a bookend.

You will take as input a word (consisting of letters A-Z) and a clue (consisting of letters A-Z and spaces) and you must determine if the word is a valid solution to the clue by the above rules.

If the input is a valid pair you must output one consistent value, if it is not you must output a distinct consistent value.

This is code golf so the goal is to minimize the size of your source code as measured in bytes.

Test cases

Valid:

POOR HOUSE, RHO
SINGLE TRACK, SICK
YOU MUST DOT YOUR IS AND CROSS YOUR TS, YURTS
STAND CLEAR, STAR
TO ME, TOME
IN A PICKLE, NAP

Invalid:

IMPROPER USE, PERUSE
SINGLE TRACK, SINGLET
PLANE TICKET, ET
START A WAR, STAR
TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE, TONE

posted 6 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

6mo ago

WheatWizard‭

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