Regex games: 8 fun ways to practice regex in your browser

The best regex games you can play in a browser are Regex Hunter (a daily regex golf puzzle, with practice packs and multiplayer races), Regex Crossword (grids where every row and column is a regex), the classic Regex Golf levels and regexle (a daily hexagonal regex crossword). If you'd rather have guided lessons, RegexOne and RegexLearn teach the syntax with small exercises, and HackerRank and Codewars have interview-style regex problems checked by tests. All eight are free to start.

We make Regex Hunter, so it's first on the list. The other seven are the ones we'd point a friend to anyway, and the table below says honestly what each one is good for.

Here's what a regex game looks like, in one board:

01The eight at a glance

02Regex Hunter: a daily regex puzzle, like Wordle

Regex Hunter gives everyone the same hunt each day: a list of words to catch and a list to spare. You write one regex that does both, and your score is its length, so once it works you start trimming. That's regex golf, the game from xkcd #1313, on a fresh board every day with a par to beat and a streak to keep.

When one a day isn't enough:

• Practice packs: 20 free packs with 117 levels, each pack drilling one technique, from shorthand classes to lookarounds and backreferences. No timer, no leaderboard.
• Hunting Spree: a multiplayer regex game. Race friends or coworkers through a burst of hunts on a live timer, as a room, a team or a 1v1 challenge.
• Community hunts: 189 puzzles made by players, each with its own leaderboard. You can publish your own.
• Academy: 9 lesson tracks if you're starting from zero.

Good for: five minutes a day, and getting faster at the patterns you write at work.

Less good for: reading other people's huge regexes. You write patterns here; the crosswords below make you read them.

03Regex Crossword: reading regex, one cell at a time

Regex Crossword turns regex into a logic puzzle. Each row and each column has a pattern next to it, and you fill in the grid so every row and column matches. You never write a regex; you work out what one means, which is a different and very useful skill.

There's a five-puzzle tutorial, then sets of puzzles and harder challenges, and a large collection of puzzles made by players. A login is optional.

Good for: reading patterns, especially classes, alternation and backreferences.

Less good for: writing your own. Pair it with something from this list where you type the pattern.

04Regex Golf: the classic levels

Regex Golf is the browser game that followed the xkcd comic. Each level has a list to match and a list to avoid, and your score goes up for every word you get right and down for every character you use. Beyond the classic set there are extra sets of levels, and some of them are very hard.

Good for: golfers who want the original puzzles, with no account and no extras.

Less good for: beginners. It jumps into the deep end fast, and there are no lessons or hints.

05regexle: a daily hexagonal crossword

regexle is a daily puzzle: a hexagonal grid where every row, in each of three directions, has to match the regex printed at its edge. A new puzzle comes out each day, and you can pick the size of the grid.

Good for: a daily puzzle that tests reading rather than writing.

Less good for: a quick break. A large grid can take a while.

06RegexOne: lessons with an exercise each

RegexOne isn't a game so much as a guided tour: a series of short lessons, each introducing one idea with an exercise you solve before moving on, then practice problems like phone numbers, emails, log lines and URLs.

Good for: someone who has never written a regex.

Less good for: practice after the basics. Once you've done the problems, there's nothing new.

07RegexLearn: a step-by-step course

RegexLearn is a free, open-source course that walks from the basics to advanced topics one small step at a time, with a cheat sheet and a playground alongside.

Good for: beginners who like a structured course and a reference to keep open.

Less good for: challenge. It's teaching, not puzzles.

08HackerRank: interview-style regex problems

HackerRank has a regex track with problems grouped by topic (character classes, repetition, grouping, backreferences, assertions) plus longer applied ones. Each problem is checked by hidden tests, much like a coding interview.

Good for: interview prep, and getting used to being graded by tests you can't see.

Less good for: fun. These are exercises, and you need an account.

09Codewars: regex inside real code

Codewars has many katas tagged Regular Expressions, ranked by difficulty and solvable in the language you pick. After you solve one, you can read other people's solutions, which is a fast way to pick up tricks.

Good for: using regex the way you do at work, inside a function, with tests.

Less good for: focused regex practice. Some tagged katas barely need a regex.

10Which one should you play?

• New to regex: RegexOne or RegexLearn first, or the Academy, then a daily puzzle to keep it fresh.
• You want a habit: the daily hunt or regexle. A few minutes a day adds up fast.
• You want to read patterns better: Regex Crossword.
• Interview coming up: HackerRank, plus the practice packs, whose levels are mostly patterns you write at work: formats, log lines and identifiers in code.
• You want to play with other people: Hunting Spree, with friends, coworkers or a team.

11Play today's hunt

Play today's hunt → A new regex golf puzzle every day: catch the targets, spare the innocents, beat par. Free, in your browser, no sign-up.

New to golf? Read Regex golf strategies: how to beat par.