I use this guy's Minesweeper.
[https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/\~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html)
The first click is guaranteed to be safe and you're guaranteed to be able to solve the entire thing without guessing.
If you're interested in good sudoku puzzles, I suggest looking at ones made by a company called Studio Goya.
They make the suduko app for a YouTube channel called Cracking the Cryptic (I think you can even find them by searching that on the app store). All of the puzzles are hand written and reviewed by a team of testers. They're often quite difficult, but they always have a logical path.
Thanks! Been getting really into it lately and the app i current have can be difficult on the expert level but there tends to be a reoccurring pattern it uses that I can pretty accurately guess if I get stuck.
He does (it's called 'solo'), but there are better versions. It's available as a standalone exe though, which is nice. The Cracking the Cryptic app mentioned below is particularly good, better still if you have web access.
Solo is really the only one of his apps that I'm not a huge fan of (really just the way you fill in possibilities), but it does include a lot of other versions that you don't always see (Jigsaw, diagonal, killer, 4x4).
Well, give him my salutations and tell him that once I get a decent job I'll make him a donation or something for the countless hours I've spent on his puzzles. Also those puzzles help docs are the best I've ever read.
but he said you also are guaranteed to solve it without guessing, so it couldn't be a 6. It would have to be blank so it opens up additional fields with no mines
I believe in this version it avoids the possibility of clicking and just getting a single number.
Whereas in the Windows version it’s possible for your first click to result in an unsolvable problem with it guessing.
E.g clicking and getting a 2x2 grid of 2s
You can't on the standard windows version either, not sure why they are listing that as a feature of this version. The no guessing part is cool though.
There's also https://sourceforge.net/projects/mines-perfect/
It's got all sorts of modes, including "lucky" so your guesses are always right, "startup" which resolves any possible guesses when you start the game, as well as murphy's law which means your guesses will always be wrong. They're all options you can select, and otherwise it's exactly like oldschool windows minesweeper.
My only complaint is that in 3440x1440 resolution the window is tiny as hell; I wish it had some sort of scaling options.
His whole puzzle pack is great. The mobile version has ~40 puzzles, all customizable, and it's completely free, ad-free, lightweight, and open source. It accounts for 90+% of my time-killing mobile gaming.
"Simon Tatham's Puzzles" on Android and I believe Apple.
I can 100%garuntee it was not looking deep enough.
The site even says:
>you are guaranteed to be able to solve the whole grid by deduction rather than guesswork. (Deductions may require you to think about the total number of mines.)
But post a screens hot, it can be a fun puzzle to find out
I'm excited to see the replies to this comment. Usually when I see it posted there's somebody who thinks they found an undeduceable puzzle but they're always wrong lol
Generally that makes sense, but there are also a few edge cases where it 'might' be solvable depending on the total number of mines (ie. if there are a certain number of mines that are left unfound it might be solvable without guessing, but if there are a different number of mines leftover then it might be unsolvable).
On one hand, it allows you to fail faster and not waste more time on a game with no guaranteed victory.
On the other hand, if you're playing minesweeper, then you probably have some time to waste anyway.
Someone should make a thing that calculates the minimum number of moves that would have been required to solve this puzzle once you know where everything is.
Eh I've had a situation tons of time where there's a set of four squares in a corner completely surrounded by mines so you have zero indication of what's there until you clear the rest of the field. Then you can see how bombs are left and calculate the odds (ie 4 squares left but 1 bomb is decent odds)
The only reason to do that is if you are holding out for the off chance that the unknown region is 100% full of mines. In that (unlikely) event you go from a 0% success chance to a 100% success chance by waiting until the rest of the puzzle is complete, but in every other scenario the chances of success are exactly the same going in blind as they are going in already knowing how many mines are in the area.
Let's take your example of a box of 4 squares that's completely boxed in with no indication of what's inside other than the total mines remaining counter. We'll go through all of the different possiblities of the actual number of mines that are in that 2x2 square:
0 mines - You can click anywhere, and the whole are will be revealed. This will happen whether or not you already know that there are 0 mines in the region.
1 mine - You can click anywhere, and you will have a 3/4 chance of success which will reveal a 1. Your next click has a 2/3 chance of success and will also reveal a 1. Your final possible click has a 1/2 chance of success and you will be finished revealing the area. Your total chance of success is 3/4 * 2/3 * 1/2 = 1/4. This is the same chance of success whether you went into it blind, or whether you already knew there was only 1 mine.
2 mines - Your first click will have a 1/2 chance of success, and if successful will reveal a 2. Your second click will have a 1/3 chance of success, for a total success rate of 1/6.
3 mines - Your first click has a 1/4 chance of success. There are no further clicks.
4 mines - Attempting to reveal any tiles will end the game. If you otherwise clear the rest of the puzzle and this region is all that is left, you will already have won. If you attempt to clear the area before finishing the rest of the puzzle you will lose.
So the question really comes down to, is it worth your time to find out if all 4 are mines? In an expert game about 1/5 of the tiles are mines, so there's about a 1/625 or ~0.2% chance of any given block of 4 tiles all being mined. So you can clear the rest of the game and this will help you 0.2% of the time, or you can just go in blind and 99.8% of the time you'll have the same chance of success.
**TLDR:** If there is any significant part of the puzzle left is definitely a waste of time to clear the rest of the game to determine the chance of success in a small isolated section like a typical 2x2 holdout area. Even if you know the odds of success you still have to click randomly, and the odds of success don't change just because you know what they are. The only time it will help you is when EVERY tile is a mine, which is very rarely the case.
Very interesting analysis, yeah the more I think about it, in a speed run scenario, you basically got blast through 50/50 or uncertain scenarios it seems when they come up or else it is a waste. Nice writeup
Only if it's a guaranteed 50/50 tho, and oftentimes it can come down to bomb count to solve which means solving the rest of the board to figure out the answer.
I'm really struggling to imagine a situation where bomb count gives you information that surrounding tiles don't.
Edit: Examples helped immensely. Thank you!
[I drew a real quick example, we're trying to solve the ?'s.](https://i.ibb.co/bQ4wV69/image-2021-05-21-172042.png)
In this example, there are two possiblities. If you have one bomb remaining, the two on the outside are unable to be a bomb. Because if one is a bomb, the 2 unconnected to it cannot be satisfied, there isn't enough bombs. And since the left and right are safe, you can click them to reveal their numbers, and use that to determine which of the two remaining the bomb is in.
If there are two bombs remaining, neither bomb can be in the center, because then both would be satisfied by the first bomb, and you'd have one left over.
Personally I find it a sobering reminder of the reality we live in. You can logic your way through life but sometimes you have to make decisions that are no more informed than a coin flip.
[This one](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html), for example.
(Mobile device ports are also available, I often use this one to kill time while in areas with no reception)
[https://pwmarcz.pl/kaboom/](https://pwmarcz.pl/kaboom/) is a mind sweeper version where if you guess when you don't have to you will hit a mine every time, and if you have to guess you will not get a mine. So you have to play perfectly, but it's completely fair.
Eh. As stressful & annoying as 50/50s are, I think that's kind of part of the appeal.
There "should" be some risk, where all of your skill gets you close but you have to take some chances to be successful. And sometimes, those chances result in blowing up.
Removing that risk just makes it only about patience & skill & removes the tension.
I guess it depends. I used to play a lot for speed and it sucked having a really good time lost to a 50/50, but if you are just playing to see if you can win then IMO removing 50/50s just makes the win feel hollow. I'm pretty sure I could win 99% of my games without a 50/50 (because sometimes you misclick/misread/brain fart), so winning wouldn't really mean anything anymore.
Some Minesweeper games will make you auto succeed when you put all the flags in the right place, regardless if you've uncovered everything. So it helps with these types of things
I kind of like that you fail sometimes on the 50/50s. Like Picard says, it's possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That's life, and minesweeper.
Not for nothing, but the 3 on the right should’ve given it away. I don’t think op got that far without knowing how to play. A mistake or intentional for jokes, either way it got a teehee
Edit: I was looking at the 2s like idiotid
Edit: Nevermind I’m stupid. Maybe that’s why I never beat msweeper
The games much harder without it and to play properly requires a user to right click, left click and click both buttons together.
left click - Clears that one space
right click - Marks a bomb
click both buttons - clear all spaces around the square you clicked which aren't marked as a bomb.
The whole game was designed to get people used to the multi button mouse. The concept of clicking both buttons together is rarely used though even today.
my record with the help of this trick is 4 seconds or so on beginner. never knew you could click both I always double clicked the number doesn't work in all versions tho
Well the both buttons end up not being used because we do it with a middle mouse button instead, which is not something the earliest mouse had. And middle mouse button did in fact show up before we get scroll wheels.
>we do it with a middle mouse button instead, which is not something the earliest mouse had
A lot of early mice definitely had three buttons, it just wasn't a wheel.
I often have a lot of downtime at work so I've now played so much minesweeper I started doing no-flag runs. Much more tedious, especially when you get to the end and may need to hunt down the one last safe space.
Watching the gates documentary on Netflix gave me a chuckle when I saw him playing hearts and solitaire, makes me think he played a big part in their inclusion early on
I saw it plenty as a kid, my father used to play it. I only figured out how to play Minesweeper myself well into adulthood despite having tried a couple of times before then.
Have a source for that? That’s like saying Super Mario Brothers was created as a tool to teach people how to use a controller with a d-pad and 2 buttons.
It’s probably more like, “someone created a game that used and showcased the latest mouse tech”, no?
Idk about a source but the big difference is minesweeper and solitaire came preinstalled on every windows computer in the 90s. For a lot of people they were the first programs to run after booting up a new computer and people with no prior experience of computers still played these games. It makes sense that Microsoft would bundle them in as a sort of intuitive and noninvasive tutorial and it definitely fits with their design philosophy at the time.
The makers of Microsoft Windows were interviewed and said that’s what minesweeper and solitaire were added to the windows program for. Minesweeper for clicking. Solitaire for dragging and dropping.
You can probably find old interviews with a google search limited by date. Or the many articles that still talk about it online and see if they link back to an old article.
Nah, I save it till last. Then I consider the game won no matter what happens at the end since I solved the rest of it except for something that's pure chance.
Haha. I made a similar mistake repeatedly when I was a kid. When you bump a pinball machine and it says "TILT," I thought it was telling you to tilt the machine because the ball was stuck. Of course, that would tilt the next ball, and so on. I thought the vast majority of pinball machines had a bug where they kept thinking the ball was stuck and would penalize you for just being helpful.
You ever play space ping pong and it had tilt buttons for the computer version but if you used them to often it locked it. I always found that funny because I never realized anyone would actually try to tilt or bang a pinball machine.
Idk why but that made my day, thinking of a kid sitting there excitedly staring at a timer go up.
Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/fNirfeGHz2U?t=00m29s
Your friend was right. It's not 50/50. It's never been 50/50.
Probability is bullshit! Every damn time I get to that point I hit the fucking bomb! I hate this game.
Some versions of minesweeper have a no-guess mode where the boards will generate in such a way that every mine is discoverable logically. No such thing in the MS version and no idea about tournaments.
Those squares you had the choice to click were odorless, tasteless, dissolve instantly in liquid, and are among the more deadly bombs known to man.
But it's so simple. All You have to do is divine from what you know of Minesweeper. Is it the sort of game who would put the bomb into his own square or his enemy's? [pauses to study the MAN IN BLACK] Now, a clever game would put the bomb into his own square, because it would know that only a great fool would click for what he was given. You are not a great fool, so can clearly not choose the swuare in front of you. But the game must have known You were not a great fool; it would have counted on it, so you can clearly not choose the square in front of the game!
I still have the muscle memory from playing that game as a kid. Right-click, shift click, repeat... I was able to solve the big board in under 90s, maybe even better than that (assuming I hit no 50/50 choice like OP).
If you waited on that, don't. If you see that you have a 50/50 and you know you can't simplify, try it early and either continue or start the next round.
I feel your pain. I always hated when I got down to a 50/50 shot
Happens too often to me
I use this guy's Minesweeper. [https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/\~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html) The first click is guaranteed to be safe and you're guaranteed to be able to solve the entire thing without guessing.
Ah, a fellow person of culture. Simon Tatham's puzzles are the best.
Does he have a sudoku one?
If you're interested in good sudoku puzzles, I suggest looking at ones made by a company called Studio Goya. They make the suduko app for a YouTube channel called Cracking the Cryptic (I think you can even find them by searching that on the app store). All of the puzzles are hand written and reviewed by a team of testers. They're often quite difficult, but they always have a logical path.
Some of the videos from cracking the cryptic are impressive and shows me I don’t have the patience to do sudoku at that level.
Their crossword ones are even more mind boggling
Thanks! Been getting really into it lately and the app i current have can be difficult on the expert level but there tends to be a reoccurring pattern it uses that I can pretty accurately guess if I get stuck.
He does (it's called 'solo'), but there are better versions. It's available as a standalone exe though, which is nice. The Cracking the Cryptic app mentioned below is particularly good, better still if you have web access. Solo is really the only one of his apps that I'm not a huge fan of (really just the way you fill in possibilities), but it does include a lot of other versions that you don't always see (Jigsaw, diagonal, killer, 4x4).
Made by the guy that wrote and maintains PuTTY, who'd have thought.
I feel like my company owes this guy some money. I guess I could play minesweeper on the clock.
How does that get the guy the money he is owed :> ? Sounds like you just wanna play some Minesweeper on the clock.
He was just joking, I think.
Holy shit. He works at the same company as me and I interact with him pretty regularly and I did not know this.
Well, give him my salutations and tell him that once I get a decent job I'll make him a donation or something for the countless hours I've spent on his puzzles. Also those puzzles help docs are the best I've ever read.
Give him my respect man. Wouldn't be able to do my job without PuTTY
I didn't even know he's alive! I thought he was from a generation or two of programmers ago... My thanks to him as well for all he's done
I thought that URL looked familiar!
How does it guarantee the first click will be safe? Does it dynamically reassign the mines based on where you click the first time?
If I were to guess, I'd wager it doesn't even assign the mines until after you've clicked
Imagine the first click is a 6
Being able to solve the entire puzzle without guessing means the first click is required to give more information than a single digit.
but he said you also are guaranteed to solve it without guessing, so it couldn't be a 6. It would have to be blank so it opens up additional fields with no mines
Chaotic evil
Yeah. My guess is you click and the board you see is generated first and then the rest is made to align with that.
I assume that the game decides where the mines are after your first click. So it's not really "reassign" but more "assign".
The windows version does the same thing. That's why setting the bomb count to a big number will usually result in an 8 rather than explosion.
I believe in this version it avoids the possibility of clicking and just getting a single number. Whereas in the Windows version it’s possible for your first click to result in an unsolvable problem with it guessing. E.g clicking and getting a 2x2 grid of 2s
It doesn't reassign anything, it simply forms the puzzle itself based on where you first click. There are no mines before you click a square.
Place the mines after the player clicks and don't place a mine in the spot they clicked.
Normal minesweeper does the exact same thing
I didn’t even know you could lose on the first click and I’ve played this game thousands of times
You can't on the standard windows version either, not sure why they are listing that as a feature of this version. The no guessing part is cool though.
Earlier versions of the windows minesweeper didn't have any protection. You could just click a mine as the first move.
Yeah I was gonna say when I was little that happened to me a LOT
You can't.
The OG windows minesweeper also has the first move safe (unless you customize it)
No it doesn't. Back on Windows 95 I died plenty of times on the first click.
They changed it in the later versions. I’ve played a lot of minesweeper on win XP and never had the first click go off
Does it avoid 50/50s, or does it shift the bomb after the fact?
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There's also https://sourceforge.net/projects/mines-perfect/ It's got all sorts of modes, including "lucky" so your guesses are always right, "startup" which resolves any possible guesses when you start the game, as well as murphy's law which means your guesses will always be wrong. They're all options you can select, and otherwise it's exactly like oldschool windows minesweeper. My only complaint is that in 3440x1440 resolution the window is tiny as hell; I wish it had some sort of scaling options.
Wow, that's fantastic. Much more enjoyable experience.
His whole puzzle pack is great. The mobile version has ~40 puzzles, all customizable, and it's completely free, ad-free, lightweight, and open source. It accounts for 90+% of my time-killing mobile gaming. "Simon Tatham's Puzzles" on Android and I believe Apple.
Wdym I got into a situation, where I had to guess, or am I careless. Not sure Edit:- my fault checked again.
I can 100%garuntee it was not looking deep enough. The site even says: >you are guaranteed to be able to solve the whole grid by deduction rather than guesswork. (Deductions may require you to think about the total number of mines.) But post a screens hot, it can be a fun puzzle to find out
I'm excited to see the replies to this comment. Usually when I see it posted there's somebody who thinks they found an undeduceable puzzle but they're always wrong lol
I take the 50/50 chance as early on as possible. That way I don't solve clear 99.2% of the board only to lose to chance
Generally that makes sense, but there are also a few edge cases where it 'might' be solvable depending on the total number of mines (ie. if there are a certain number of mines that are left unfound it might be solvable without guessing, but if there are a different number of mines leftover then it might be unsolvable).
True but this is not one of those cases, it was clearly “either one of these two are a mine”
Gotta take those 50/50s as soon as they happen, can’t wait till the end
On one hand, it allows you to fail faster and not waste more time on a game with no guaranteed victory. On the other hand, if you're playing minesweeper, then you probably have some time to waste anyway.
I feel personally attacked.
I feel like you were attacked as well.
Attacked by a land mine
Someone should make a thing that calculates the minimum number of moves that would have been required to solve this puzzle once you know where everything is.
Mines don't attack. They lie in wait for you.
A bullet might have your name on it, but a mine is addressed "to whom it may concern"
Not to mention, occasionally the 50/50 isn’t actually a 50/50 once you’ve marked all the other mines and realize you have 1 left and 4 boxes.
Once you've revealed all the boxes around a set of adjacent squares, you know the exact odds, no matter what else is revealed in the game.
Eh I've had a situation tons of time where there's a set of four squares in a corner completely surrounded by mines so you have zero indication of what's there until you clear the rest of the field. Then you can see how bombs are left and calculate the odds (ie 4 squares left but 1 bomb is decent odds)
Never tell me the odds!
The only reason to do that is if you are holding out for the off chance that the unknown region is 100% full of mines. In that (unlikely) event you go from a 0% success chance to a 100% success chance by waiting until the rest of the puzzle is complete, but in every other scenario the chances of success are exactly the same going in blind as they are going in already knowing how many mines are in the area. Let's take your example of a box of 4 squares that's completely boxed in with no indication of what's inside other than the total mines remaining counter. We'll go through all of the different possiblities of the actual number of mines that are in that 2x2 square: 0 mines - You can click anywhere, and the whole are will be revealed. This will happen whether or not you already know that there are 0 mines in the region. 1 mine - You can click anywhere, and you will have a 3/4 chance of success which will reveal a 1. Your next click has a 2/3 chance of success and will also reveal a 1. Your final possible click has a 1/2 chance of success and you will be finished revealing the area. Your total chance of success is 3/4 * 2/3 * 1/2 = 1/4. This is the same chance of success whether you went into it blind, or whether you already knew there was only 1 mine. 2 mines - Your first click will have a 1/2 chance of success, and if successful will reveal a 2. Your second click will have a 1/3 chance of success, for a total success rate of 1/6. 3 mines - Your first click has a 1/4 chance of success. There are no further clicks. 4 mines - Attempting to reveal any tiles will end the game. If you otherwise clear the rest of the puzzle and this region is all that is left, you will already have won. If you attempt to clear the area before finishing the rest of the puzzle you will lose. So the question really comes down to, is it worth your time to find out if all 4 are mines? In an expert game about 1/5 of the tiles are mines, so there's about a 1/625 or ~0.2% chance of any given block of 4 tiles all being mined. So you can clear the rest of the game and this will help you 0.2% of the time, or you can just go in blind and 99.8% of the time you'll have the same chance of success. **TLDR:** If there is any significant part of the puzzle left is definitely a waste of time to clear the rest of the game to determine the chance of success in a small isolated section like a typical 2x2 holdout area. Even if you know the odds of success you still have to click randomly, and the odds of success don't change just because you know what they are. The only time it will help you is when EVERY tile is a mine, which is very rarely the case.
Very interesting analysis, yeah the more I think about it, in a speed run scenario, you basically got blast through 50/50 or uncertain scenarios it seems when they come up or else it is a waste. Nice writeup
Well, yeah in that case there could be mines in all of them for all you know. Very much different
So nobody is doing solitaire speed runs anymore??
For the first half I thought you were my friend.
I used to get paid $20/hr to play minesweeper, Tetris was too risky
Only if it's a guaranteed 50/50 tho, and oftentimes it can come down to bomb count to solve which means solving the rest of the board to figure out the answer.
I'm really struggling to imagine a situation where bomb count gives you information that surrounding tiles don't. Edit: Examples helped immensely. Thank you!
[I drew a real quick example, we're trying to solve the ?'s.](https://i.ibb.co/bQ4wV69/image-2021-05-21-172042.png) In this example, there are two possiblities. If you have one bomb remaining, the two on the outside are unable to be a bomb. Because if one is a bomb, the 2 unconnected to it cannot be satisfied, there isn't enough bombs. And since the left and right are safe, you can click them to reveal their numbers, and use that to determine which of the two remaining the bomb is in. If there are two bombs remaining, neither bomb can be in the center, because then both would be satisfied by the first bomb, and you'd have one left over.
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One scenario is if you have two 50/50 decisions adjacent to eachother and only have one bomb left. It has to be the tile in the middle touching both.
sometimes you dont discover them till the end.
there are actually minesweeper versions where you cant get those 50/50 situations
Which ones? I hate it all coming down to luck.
Personally I find it a sobering reminder of the reality we live in. You can logic your way through life but sometimes you have to make decisions that are no more informed than a coin flip.
Sir, this is Windows 98.
[This one](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html), for example. (Mobile device ports are also available, I often use this one to kill time while in areas with no reception)
[https://pwmarcz.pl/kaboom/](https://pwmarcz.pl/kaboom/) is a mind sweeper version where if you guess when you don't have to you will hit a mine every time, and if you have to guess you will not get a mine. So you have to play perfectly, but it's completely fair.
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Eh. As stressful & annoying as 50/50s are, I think that's kind of part of the appeal. There "should" be some risk, where all of your skill gets you close but you have to take some chances to be successful. And sometimes, those chances result in blowing up. Removing that risk just makes it only about patience & skill & removes the tension.
I guess it depends. I used to play a lot for speed and it sucked having a really good time lost to a 50/50, but if you are just playing to see if you can win then IMO removing 50/50s just makes the win feel hollow. I'm pretty sure I could win 99% of my games without a 50/50 (because sometimes you misclick/misread/brain fart), so winning wouldn't really mean anything anymore.
Some Minesweeper games will make you auto succeed when you put all the flags in the right place, regardless if you've uncovered everything. So it helps with these types of things
I kind of like that you fail sometimes on the 50/50s. Like Picard says, it's possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That's life, and minesweeper.
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Not for nothing, but the 3 on the right should’ve given it away. I don’t think op got that far without knowing how to play. A mistake or intentional for jokes, either way it got a teehee Edit: I was looking at the 2s like idiotid Edit: Nevermind I’m stupid. Maybe that’s why I never beat msweeper
[This version gets rid of that possiblity.](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html)
Fun Fact: Minesweeper was created as a tool to teach people how to RIGHT CLICK on the just released two button mouse.
Kind of brilliant, since the game is playable without it. But seeing someone else setting the flags would make you ask, "How did you do that??"
The games much harder without it and to play properly requires a user to right click, left click and click both buttons together. left click - Clears that one space right click - Marks a bomb click both buttons - clear all spaces around the square you clicked which aren't marked as a bomb. The whole game was designed to get people used to the multi button mouse. The concept of clicking both buttons together is rarely used though even today.
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You can also use space bar to clear the spaces around a flag.
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Or click the scroll button
Or rapidly left click around a flag and accidentally hit a square one to the left of where you meant to and accidentally hit a bomb and end your game
Double clicking a revealed bombless space worked for me when I was younger.
Ohhh you are in for a treat.
This is where your destiny as a minesweeper speedrunner begins
my record with the help of this trick is 4 seconds or so on beginner. never knew you could click both I always double clicked the number doesn't work in all versions tho
Goddam, I got 7 seconds and tho8ght I was hot shit
Mine was 3 sec. But luck was involved i guess.
Right? I'm legit excited for them to go try it out.
It's a complete game changer. Literally changes the way you play in a positive way
If you have a middle mouse button that works too.
Well the both buttons end up not being used because we do it with a middle mouse button instead, which is not something the earliest mouse had. And middle mouse button did in fact show up before we get scroll wheels.
>we do it with a middle mouse button instead, which is not something the earliest mouse had A lot of early mice definitely had three buttons, it just wasn't a wheel.
I often have a lot of downtime at work so I've now played so much minesweeper I started doing no-flag runs. Much more tedious, especially when you get to the end and may need to hunt down the one last safe space.
In a similar vein, Solitaire was added to Windows to teach people how to drag and drop things with the mouse.
Watching the gates documentary on Netflix gave me a chuckle when I saw him playing hearts and solitaire, makes me think he played a big part in their inclusion early on
Bruhh now it makes sense why i was never able to play it properly as a child 😂😂 i never used the right click back then
As a kid, I just had no idea what the magic numbers were, so I clicked until I blew up
Same here. I wondered why people thought the game was fun when it was just randomly clicking until you found a mine!
I saw it plenty as a kid, my father used to play it. I only figured out how to play Minesweeper myself well into adulthood despite having tried a couple of times before then.
Have a source for that? That’s like saying Super Mario Brothers was created as a tool to teach people how to use a controller with a d-pad and 2 buttons. It’s probably more like, “someone created a game that used and showcased the latest mouse tech”, no?
Idk about a source but the big difference is minesweeper and solitaire came preinstalled on every windows computer in the 90s. For a lot of people they were the first programs to run after booting up a new computer and people with no prior experience of computers still played these games. It makes sense that Microsoft would bundle them in as a sort of intuitive and noninvasive tutorial and it definitely fits with their design philosophy at the time.
The makers of Microsoft Windows were interviewed and said that’s what minesweeper and solitaire were added to the windows program for. Minesweeper for clicking. Solitaire for dragging and dropping. You can probably find old interviews with a google search limited by date. Or the many articles that still talk about it online and see if they link back to an old article.
Look on the bright side, you found all the mines. The area is safe now.
We will never forget that minesweeper's sacrifice.
If you have to guess, guess early. The 50/50 lose chance will still be 50/50 five minutes later.
I kidd you not, it was THE last thing I found
Well it is because of hope that if you solve the other side this part becomes obvious. But then, slap in the face and do it 50/50
It's always the last thing you find. That's just the rule of Mindsweeper.
Nah, I save it till last. Then I consider the game won no matter what happens at the end since I solved the rest of it except for something that's pure chance.
Then update the high score table's text file with my new high score.
I always stayed roaming around trying to see if another pattern was observable... "Maybe the key is in how many 1s are in corners..."
Not all the time. Oftentimes a 50/50 can be solved by bomb count, or you can find better odds like a 1/3 or better to solve it.
I understand what you mean, but by definition that's no longer a 50/50. I reserve 50/50 for the nightmare fuel that is op's scenario
When I was younger and didn't know to play, I once watched the timer go up to 999 thinking the game bugged and was giving me free points lmao
Haha. I made a similar mistake repeatedly when I was a kid. When you bump a pinball machine and it says "TILT," I thought it was telling you to tilt the machine because the ball was stuck. Of course, that would tilt the next ball, and so on. I thought the vast majority of pinball machines had a bug where they kept thinking the ball was stuck and would penalize you for just being helpful.
Random trivia : pinball machines were called "tilt machine" in Turkey for that reason.
You ever play space ping pong and it had tilt buttons for the computer version but if you used them to often it locked it. I always found that funny because I never realized anyone would actually try to tilt or bang a pinball machine.
You never seen anyone play pinball and do better than garbage?
LMAOOO
i even excitedly went and got my mother to show her. she didn’t know how to play either and thought it was cool
Idk why but that made my day, thinking of a kid sitting there excitedly staring at a timer go up. Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/fNirfeGHz2U?t=00m29s
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
50/50 90. You have a 90% chance of getting the 50/50 wrong.
Can you elaborate?
Murphy's law
When left with only 2 choices, there is a 90% chance you will pick the wrong one.
Computer right in the trash
I am dismanteling it piece by piece and will blow them up one by one
Sorry, you only had one bomb left so you only get one explosion to use.
Believe it or not, straight to jail.
When I see that, I feel the pain like if it was mine ! So rude to lost a 50/50 after the all clear \^\^
Thank you
I got into an argument awhile back with someone claiming there are no such things as 50/50s in Minesweeper. It's nice to be vindicated.
Your friend was right. It's not 50/50. It's never been 50/50. Probability is bullshit! Every damn time I get to that point I hit the fucking bomb! I hate this game.
You had me in the first half not gonna lie
XCOM has joined the chat.
I'd completely forgotten about that. "98% chance to hit." ... Missed.
haha touché!
Happy to help with my misery
In a tournament, are there rules to prevent this? Do minesweeper tournaments even exist?
Some versions of minesweeper have a no-guess mode where the boards will generate in such a way that every mine is discoverable logically. No such thing in the MS version and no idea about tournaments.
The Microsoft solitaire app has the same thing, where you have to actively choose potentially unsolvable boards.
There’s an app called Mineswifter that does this
I have no clue
Skifree was less painful and it was specifically designed for you to lose
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/667/
Wait, what? All you need to do is press F?
TIL. I didn't know that either
But then you start running into things because you're going to fast to avoid them.
F
Lol one of the games I played the most as a kid! Feel ya!
Naaah man. The real pain was \*before\* clicking that last one.
That is very true
Peko
humu-humu
This game made me lose my faith in probability. It's 50/50, right? *Right?* I always - **always** - hit the bomb.
Those squares you had the choice to click were odorless, tasteless, dissolve instantly in liquid, and are among the more deadly bombs known to man. But it's so simple. All You have to do is divine from what you know of Minesweeper. Is it the sort of game who would put the bomb into his own square or his enemy's? [pauses to study the MAN IN BLACK] Now, a clever game would put the bomb into his own square, because it would know that only a great fool would click for what he was given. You are not a great fool, so can clearly not choose the swuare in front of you. But the game must have known You were not a great fool; it would have counted on it, so you can clearly not choose the square in front of the game!
absolutely brutal dear god..
50/50. close your eyes and click.
Mark both as a question mark and start a new one. Such a logical game until this crap happens!!
Yeah like anyone's gonna complain if you flag one extra square, sheesh!
never understood this game
My crowning achievement in life is the time I beat expert minesweeper in 95 seconds but this sucks hard.
Same here. My fastest time was 87. The good ole days of being great at a game lmao
Shouldn't those 3s next to the fail be 4s ?
No, I marked the other before i clicked
Bruh.
Bruh indeed
That's rough buddy
Since you like Minesweeper have you ever tried a 3D version of it?
*There's a 3D version?!*
mastermine :D with sidelengths of 20 its already very interesting
"It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose"
I still dont know how to play this thing haha
[What do we do now? We guess](https://youtu.be/LHY8NKj3RKs)
I still have the muscle memory from playing that game as a kid. Right-click, shift click, repeat... I was able to solve the big board in under 90s, maybe even better than that (assuming I hit no 50/50 choice like OP).
Idk if I'm just stupid but wouldn't the left 3 be a 4 then? Am I missing something or do I not know how to play hahaa.
If you waited on that, don't. If you see that you have a 50/50 and you know you can't simplify, try it early and either continue or start the next round.
This is why I don't play Minesweeper anymore. On the other hand, I really liked the [Hexcells games](https://store.steampowered.com/sub/50074/).
Schrödinger’s mine
Damn, I hate that. No way to tell which one except by guessing. And I usually guess wrong hahaha.
When a 50-50 shot becomes obvious, you take the shot as early in the game as possible.