Since I’m still learning my way through Jupyter, I tried the Classic as a notebook.
I’m also not sure what the best way to present a notebook is, if I have a WordPress site? The include I used last time wasn’t that great.
For the Express, the best score I can manage is 6. In this grid, there’s no legal place to put a 1 in the top row.

My answer to the Classic agrees with Laurent Lessard’s, so I assume it’s right! (Hopefully it agrees for the right reasons…)
https://laurentlessard.com/bookproofs/dungeons-dragons/
Right on both, which is satisfying: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/somethings-fishy-in-the-state-of-the-riddler/
The discussion of how to solve the Classic is interesting. I really like the submitter’s treatments with non-strictly increasing numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. It seems intuitive, it’s simple, and it gives the correct answer. I suspect if I’d thought of it myself, I’d be reluctant to give it as justification for my answer, as I’d be uncertain of the implications of the transformation – but I assume I’d be wrong to do so!