Why can I not stop playing that gawdawful, monotonous, pain-in-the-fingers inducing and frustrating-as-hell game???
I play it at home when I’ve nothing better to do. I play it at work, when I usually do have better things to do. Mostly, I play it when I’m bored - which sadly doesn’t say much for the kind of life I lead, seeing how much I play it.
I am good at Minesweeper - I’m yet to meet someone who can best my best times: Beginner - 7 seconds; Intermediate - 54 seconds; Expert - 175 seconds. At home. Best times at work are a second or so more, but I blame that on the semi-crappy mouse.
The problem is, I’m yet to beat these times. No matter how hard I try, I can’t go faster. Not for a lack of speed, mind you. Sometimes, I’m a second or two faster, but invariably, I’m left to choose between 2 blocks, and I click on the mine. If I had a dollar for each time that’s happened, I’d be rich. Sort of, anyway. But still I keep it up. Right hand on the mouse, and one finger on the F2 key, which in my case is probably used as much as the “Enter” key! Already while typing this, I’ve played the game about 7 times!!
My ex could do expert in under 2 minutes, and intermediate at 40-something. I never had the patience to get under 3 minutes for expert, but I did beat a minute in the end for intermediate.
Having an optical mouse really helps your times apparently. Haven’t tried it myself, but that’s how she got those times.
If you want my advice on how to stop, just delete it.
gouda, you must uninstall minesweeper from both your computers, NOW. Otherwise, you will lose SOOO much more of your precious time to that soul-devourer.
175 seconds on expert, huh? I hate to burst your bubble, but if you’re taking more than one second per mine, you’ve got a ways to go. My best time was 91 seconds–never could get under 90.
I’ll probably open up a can of worms here, but:
How can you guys even play games on expert? It just seems so tedious to me. First, you have to go through 5-10 games before you can even find a space to start with, then the game usually deginerates into a guessing scenario, where the are several times when the exact placement of a mine cannot be determined by logic, so you must guess. I think I’ve only won 3-4 Expert level games, out of probably 100-200 that I’ve played.
I much perfer Intermediate level. Games are fast, guessing situations only occur once or twice per game, as opposed to 5+ times in expert, and it’s just more fun.
For comparison, my times are:
Beginner: 7 sec
Intermediate: 26 sec
Expert: 155 sec
That’ why I love expert. It’s such a great challenge. Although, it’s been a long time since I tried for any best times. What I do is I set custom to the largest grid size I can get (24 x 30), and set the mines to 149. This keeps roughly the same ratio as in the Expert setting. So now you’re playing Expert on an even bigger grid!
109 lowest expert score. But I stopped trying to best it a long time ago. Got better things to do. But I do consider any time above the 120s a slowish game. A good three button mouse set to chord-middle helps.
I got the beginner in 6 seconds. It was a complete fluke that will never be replicated by anyone. I didn’t mark any of the mines, just clicked on the tiles. Once you have ten tiles left they mark themselves.
I’ve never finished expert, and I don’t come anywhere near my mom’s score on intermediate. The 6 second beginner score is my only claim to minesweeper fame.
My own personal best was 118 seconds on expert. I did that in 1997, and havent played more than a dozen games since then. The secret to moving fast is to memorize various patterns of mines and numbers, after a while you can just sorta click through them like they are nothing.
Sometimes you get a pattern that gives it a 50-50 chance of being in a certain square without being able to tell which one. It’s time saving to recognize these situations and guess as fast as possible.
For an added challenge, has anyone beaten it on expert without marking any mines? It’s quite difficult.
I have got most patterns memorised, and I just click over them without thinking…
There’s still something wrong I’m doing.
To the people with the insanely quick times - do you complete only those games where you’ve uncovered a significant portion of the minefield within the first few clicks, or are a few open spaces enough to work with to get those times?
