Lua pattern "not"?

[Fredelas]

You might be able to use the set's complement operator ^ to exclude patterns with the word "the" in them.

For example:

defeated [^t][^h][^e]

this basically translates to:

• the word defeated
• followed by anything except a lowercase t (you might be able to stop your pattern here)
• followed by anything except a lowercase h
• followed by anything except a lowercase e

Edit: You actually should just stop your pattern after defeated [^t] since otherwise it might reject players who have an h and e as the second and third characters of their names. Since no player will ever have a name starting with a lowercase t, this pattern should suffice.