Actually, my coworker and I used to play it on Popcap also, and at first, at least, it was Bejeweled there as well… 
Highlander, you’ve got me beat by 6 seconds. Three or four years ago, I used to average in the 120s. I just fired up Minesweeper on this new (year-old) machine, and found I’d never finished a game. Just got a 148, though, so I haven’t completely lost my touch (and, I must add, I haven’t cleaned my mouse in months, so it’s a little on the jerky side).
lolagranola, it appears that the newest version of Spider has more options, which we’ve never seen. I wonder if they score the games the same way, though… Anybody beat 1096 points?
Nacho4Sara, I think I’ve got you beat in terms of gaming horror stories. Way back when I was in high school, my best friend, Chris, and I would log onto his Dad’s PDP-11 computer via 300 baud accoustic modem, and play “Dungeon,” an old text-based adventure game (it later got chopped up into pieces and sold as the Zork series for, at least, Apple-IIs). We played this game for two years. We knew the layout of the place inside and out, except for a few rooms we still hadn’t figured out the puzzles for. Another friend found a complete map for us in a gaming magazine. It didn’t help. Without finishing the main game, we learned how to get into the endgame prematurely, and solved it, giving us a rank of “Master Cheater,” or something similar. Then we went back to the unfinished puzzles in the main game.
Two years we worked on this, almost every damn day after school, and a ton of time on weekends and in the Summers. Then one day I go to Chris’s house, and he’s upset. Says the main drive of the PDP-11 crashed, and Dungeon hadn’t ever been backed up. I’ve never seen it anywhere else. Two years! I used to have a notebook full of hand-drawn maps, notes, and lists of commands which did preliminary tasks in the shortest number of turns (did I mention that the “save” feature never worked, so that every time we fired the game up we had to start over from scratch?)
When Zork showed up, I thought it was going to enable me to finish what had been so horribly unfisihed, but nooooo. Not only did they chop up the big place that was Dungeon into four different games, they also added and deleted bits and pieces. I never even played the first Zork after my initial look-see. Too depressing.
Almost 20 years later, and it still makes me want to spit.
Oif…I guess they renamed it when they licensed it out to MSN, or somethin’.
Well, in a pique of masochism, I’ve now learned that the original version of Infocom’s Zork was, indeed, called Zork, and not Dungeon. But whenever we wanted to play on Chris’s Dad’s system, we had to type in “dungeon,” and the game itself never told us differently.
Further reading shows the game was only titled due to either laziness or chance (or both), so “Zork” or “Dungeon” should be equally acceptable for early versions of the game. This article also talks about how the people who wrote the original game founded Infocom, the company I’ve rarely had anything but contempt for - for their trashing of Zork. Seems I owe those guys a long-overdue apology, since the cut-and-slash into mutliple games was due to the original’s huge scope, and a desire to transfer it to smaller machines (sorry!).
Perhaps I’ll later find out if anyone’s ported the original to the PC, in this day of huge memory spaces…
In a state that can only be described in terms of the deepest depths of masochism, I’ve just downloaded the damn C source code for Dungeon. If I manage to get it to compile properly, I fear I am doomed, since I will now vow to not cheat at all. Not one little bit. I may have the source code right here, but I will not look and/or tinker with it. Argh! What have I done?!?
Minesweeper beginner level in 3 seconds. Pow, pow, pow, and the board was cleared. I was trying to beat my brother who had 5 seconds after he beat my record of 7. I’ll have to get back to you on the other levels.
Good thing Rogue isn’t on office computers. So stupefyingly addictive that in college four or five of us would stay up until, well, four or five watching each other play a one player game that could last over half and hour. We were young once, and idiots.
Now, Chip’s Challenge, there’s a good game to get addicted to. Loads of levels, different thinking challenges on each level. I got to within three of the end, and crapped out.
Never took much of a liking to solitaire. Freecell, on the other hand…lemme check. Over 5,200 games at home (between that and the boards, Mrs. johnson rolls her eyes every time I crank up the computer), and over 2,100 at work (after more than two years of avoiding it in the office).
Now, Minesweeper, that’s the game. Six seconds on beginner, mid-30s on intermediate, and 87 on expert. I struggled and struggled to break 100, making 99 at one point, then 97 and 89 and 87 were easy. That damn game was almost the ruination of my golf game–I would play and play and play until my hand was aching, then play some more. And more. I’d manage to stay away for a week, and then start the whole cycle over again. When the pain was too much I started playing with my left hand!
Luckily, I suppose, I switched jobs about three years ago, and haven’t gotten the mouse at home or at the new job to work just so for Minesweeper (but I just checked, and even with this crappy mouse, I have nine seconds on beginner, 46 (?) on intermediate and 123 on expert–all from late 1997, thank goodness).
I’m going to try like hell to not look at any other games mentioned in this thread.
That should, of course, read “hour[ /b ].”
DaveW, my high score on Spider is over 1100 points!
My high score on Spider is 1206.
<Grumble, grumble>
Oh yeah? Well… I’d probably have a much higher Spider score if I didn’t sit there going ctrl-Z, ctrl-Z, ctrl-Z, etc., looking for “better options.” Gotta try playing some without undoing at all…
At least I’m not as bad as my office-mate, who’ll replay the same game over and over until he gets it solved. Too easy to memorize the cards that way. Funny thing is, he still winds up with scores that are really low (500-ish).
IIRC, when I came on board in my first incarnation (i.e. as omniscientnot) circa March or May 1999, there was a Free Cell thread going on. If anyone’s interested, perhaps a moderator or someone more adept than I at finding such things could do a little digging (although perhaps the thread has been deleted altogether). If memory serves, one of the posters at the time said that all of the Free Cell games could be solved, except one.
Yeah, I was hooked too until I discovered yahoo has 24/7 canasta rooms. http://games.yahoo.com/games/login?game=Canasta As if Boxerjam wasn’t enough…
http://www.boxerjam.com/
I have found a much more evil game than Mahjong: Crystal Hammer. Heard of it? Stay away. Evil, evil, evil. It’s Arkanoid done right. Massive chunks of my time have been eaten away by it recently. Thank God it’s relatively obscure, or we’d be hearing stories of lives wasted by it.
I’m a minesweeper-only addict. I’ve tried those other games, but minesweeper pulls me back every time. Freecell requires too much commitment for me. There’s nothing like minesweeper to fill up those extra 30 seconds of time you have lying around waiting for a page to load, or waiting for someone to IM you back, or waiting for 2002 to roll around.
Scores: 33 on intermediate, 87 on expert.
So far you and I are tied for the SDMB minesweeper championship, johnson. I haven’t played beginner since I last reformatted, but my best is 8 I think. I too had conniptions trying to break 100. I went through a period where I searched the web for minesweeper sites to learn as much as I possibly could, and with a week or two of focussed effort, I broke 100 about 10 times, but in the months since then I’ve only been back a few times. But any game I finish that takes longer than 130 or so I count a wasted effort.
I also play the games on yahoo. Spades and Gin are my old standbys, and I’m slowly becoming more adept at bridge, which is another lifelong addiction. For a more puzzle-oriented game, give “JT’s Blocks” a try. Quite the addictive little game there. “Dice Slider” is also quality.
Sure, expert mode of course.
Mine is 111
My girlfriend’s is 103 (that bitch!)
Wanna talk sad, I bought us the new MS totally optical mouse just for more consistent Minesweeper play
OK, something’s been driving me nuts for a couple years now; this may be the place where I finally get an answer.
I have a Hoyle Solitaire/Mahjonng CD. The Mahjonng has a bunch of different shapes, including a castle, a giant X, etc. I have been able to win at least once on every shape. EXCEPT ONE.
The heart. I can’t win that one to save my life. And I try. God, do I try. My husband tells me there must be a bug that makes that one unwinnable. But there must be a way!
Does anybody know anything about this particular game? Help! I want my hubby to quit making fun of me everytime I open the game. 
Sheri