After days of brute forcing (I used one of the slow computers), I found that the 11x11 version of the Cat Noir game is doable if no squares are marked at the beginning.
Since I don't have the source code that the actual Chat Noir game uses, I had to guess. However, the solution should be equivalent to some strategy in the actual game. (For instance, my cat will always move to the upper-left, then upper-right, etc., if given a choice.)
Edited with fancy JavaScript. Here is what goes on. Click on the display to iterate through.
Basically, it involves cutting off the cat at just the right times, and buying extra time.
I am still pretty sure that the board with one or more blocks already marked may not be winnable. For example, consider:
X . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . C . . . . . X X X X X X X X X . . X X X X X X X X X . . X X X X X X X X X . . X X X X X X X X . . . X X X X X X X X . . .
This one is still solvable, I believe, but this just goes to show that the blocks being there can work against you just as well as for you.
That’s so not how it moves, though . . . .
Right. But it should be symmetrically equivalent to how it would move. It just depends on how the six directions are prioritized.
Rotating the board (and possibly reflecting it) a bit would give a solution to the actual Chat Noir game.
But how about, say, three clicks in? The cat inexplicably doesn’t take its clear exit there.
I dunno; I just think it’s not . . . quite right.
I agree that the cat’s moves are sub-optimal… but the real Chat Noir also moves suboptimally.
The cat I designed just moves towards the hex that is closest to the edge, and breaks ties by starting with the upper-left hex and moving around clockwise.
If the cat were much smarter (by, say, breaking ties by moving to an area with more outs), I don’t know if it would be possible to beat it.
Plus, the brute force program has perfect knowledge of the cat’s strategy, so that is why on click 3 it knew that the cat would move to the left and not the right. (It was simply easiest to use a dumb minimax game tree to do this).