minesweeper question

[curwin]

From what I've seen, you never start the game by clicking on a mine. So is the map of mines determined by where you click first?

[grimpixie]

You need to play it a bit more!! This has quite often happened to me - true, most of the time, you click on an open space, but there are only 99 mines in 480 spaces (on expert), so that is just a 20% chance of hitting a mine...

Gp

[Mikahw]

I put it on custom mode. 8x8 square, 49 mines. I still havn't clicked on a mine on the first try yet, and I've tried at lest 40 times.

There's a 76% chance of landing on a mine on the first try if the mines were placed randomly, but I havn't landed on one. Not one.

Hmm, interesting. I never noticed that before.

[istara]

My brother spotted this a couple of years ago. It must be that the grid isn't determined until you've made your first move.

I play with the "Big Grid" - max custom size, and 200 mines. Nearly impossible to get out. I've done it three, maybe four times in my life.

[GilaB]

If you set the custom version to have exactly one fewer mine than there are spaces in your grid, you'll still never click on a mine your first try. I did it once just to find out what color an 8 was (it's black), but then, I've always taken far too strong an interest in all things minesweeper. (I got my time down to 78 seconds on expert a couple of months ago. Oh, the things I feel the need to brag about!)

[buckgully]

Yeah, I just tried the same thing, with the same result. However, I seem to recall that at some point you could click on a mine on your first try.

Could this be a more recent development? I don't have any windows 98 or 95 (or 3.1) machines around to try on, just 2000 and XP.

I also think that they made the solitaire game in Windows CE easier somehow. I can usually win once out of every 5-6 games or so on my HP Jornada, whereas on the PC, in Eric's Solitaire on the Mac, or in real life I very, very rarely win.

[Popup]

Originally posted by GilaB
(I got my time down to 78 seconds on expert a couple of months ago. Oh, the things I feel the need to brag about!)

:: bowing, kissing GilaBs feet::
I have found a master. I have only come under 100sec three times, and the best was 89 seconds.

[Mikahw]

if you set the custom version to have exactly one fewer mine than there are spaces in your grid, you'll still never click on a mine your first try.

How do you do that? My version doesn't seem to allow that. For example, in an 8X8 grid (64 spaces), it only allows a maximum of 49 mines. Do you have a special setting that allows you to have one less mine than spaces on the board?

Maybe it's just that I have a different version (win 98), though.

[grimpixie]

Originally posted by buckgully
Yeah, I just tried the same thing, with the same result. However, I seem to recall that at some point you could click on a mine on your first try.

Could this be a more recent development? I don't have any windows 98 or 95 (or 3.1) machines around to try on, just 2000 and XP.

Agreed - I have experinced hitting mines on the first go, but that was back in the days of 3.1 - now I have graduated to Freecell!! :p

Gp