Spent a similar amount of time... Ended up with a "solution" that breaks 1 constraint. Must have erred somewhere, but backtracking is only leading to other 1-broken constraint outcomes. Sigh.
Oooh, I was stuck because I was insisting on `.(1)(2)(3)(4)\4\3\2\1.` having the middle eight characters mirror each other, which results in a clear contradiction with a few of the crosses.
Thanks for posting the answers. I think I'm done working on it for now, but that one was really bothering me.
Because of the ".*" on either end, it's just having a sequence of 8 somewhere that are mirrored, could be the first 8 or last 8, not strictly the middle 8.
Yeah, sorry for the bad formatting. I probably should've taken the time to make it not markdownify the asterisks. Without them, it is mirroring the middle eight.
