Yeah, I definitely agree, especially for these two puzzles in particular.
Because of the complexity, trial and error will most likely get you nowhere. And yet the alternatives, in order to intentionally and meaningfully work towards an actual solution, are wayyyy too involved, and most likely not even "satisfying" for players.
And yeah, that's more or less what I did to solve the Panopticon puzzle. ^^;
Personally, I had fun spreadsheeting it all out, but I suspect that the large majority of players will give up out of frustration and just skip it entirely (which is what I did w/ the Hacking puzzle, b/c of the current difficulty).
I understand that y'all had a tight deadline to make, which is why you ended up releasing the impossible "harder" version of the Hacking puzzle, so I'm appreciative that the team is working on things like a puzzle difficulty revisit in a future patch! ♥ (although I'd enjoy having a choice between the current difficulties, and a toned down version for those 2 puzzles in particular, rather than completely gutting them in future version updates).