WOOHOO!!! I just finished my 325th game of Minesweeper on Expert mode. I have a screenshot of every single game I’ve beaten so far too!
How much of a loser am I?
I bow before your superior analytical problem solving skills!
I have only beaten it a couple of times, mostly because I’m lazy and like to take chances opening up corners.
Another fun and mindless option is to set it for the maximum size and minimum number of mines. Then you see how fast you can stop the clock. I can regularly get 1-2 seconds.
Let’s see, Minesweeper is 10 points on the loser scale. Expert mode adds just 2 points per game, but saving your games is a 5x bonus. So: 325 x 12 = 3900 x 5 = 19500.
That’s on a 100 point scale.
Yeah, but what’s your best time? 114 seconds here, but I haven’t played for a long time.
(For the record, 41 seconds Intermediate and 10 seconds on Beginner. I usually play the Expert game, but sometimes fire up the smaller ones for a quickie.)
Damn. My best is 119 seconds. You just gave me a new reason to play now. Gotta beat that 114!!!
I’ve hit 7 on beginner, but I just got lucky.
Now, is that 325 games in which you’ve completely cleared it? Man, you are a dork!
c_goat, you’ll have to beat 97 seconds.
Yep… that’s 325 cleared games.
97 is tough. I’ll beat it though… I just gotta get lucky.
Anyone posting these incredible times should also tell us what equipment and operating system they’re using.
Minesweeper on some of the older PCs consumes enough resources that clock updates are routinely missed. One coworker used to place times in the 20 to 40 second range due to the missed clock updates.
I am glad to know that I am not the only one who does that. I open all the corners first. If the corners aren’t clear the game isn’t worth playing.
I’m on a Pentium II 450 running NT 4.0. 32MB of ram. I don’t think I’ve ever had a missed clock update.
There used to be a minesweeper cheat.
If I remember correctly you could type “xyzzy” before you clicked on your first tile and the pixel in the upper left hand corner of your screen would blink on or off depending on if you were over a tile with a mine under it.
Can anyone confirm this?
So, c_goat, what’s your strategy? First of all I turn off the question mark icon. That thing caused me more problems than it helped. I don’t remember by best score. I haven’t played much in a few years. It was in the 120’s I think.
There is no strategy. After beating it 325 times you recognize certain patterns and can make effective use of the double-button-click. It also takes a good start, where a bunch of tiles open up on your first click. Plus you get better at taking wild guesses based on what you see more often.
4 seconds beginner, 78 seconds intermediate, have to go home and check for expert. It takes too long to play at work. Boring game in some ways, but you CAN win it consistently. Unlike, say, Solitaire or Free Cell.
Can’t win consistently at Freecell? I quit playing after winning my 300th consecutive game.
The game has 32,000 deals. All but one of them are winnable.
Like SouthernStyle said FreeCell is very consistently winnable. I am not as good, but I tend to win 8 out of 10 games.
Took me a couple of days to get the hang of it though.
I hate playing Minesweeper with the roller-ball mouse - it KILLS my speed… My I was voted down by the family… alas
I’ve played it on several computers so I don’t recall my best scores. But on my current computer, my scores are…
beg - 11 sec (I think I’ve had 9 sec before)
int - 50 sec (I think I’ve been in the 39-47 range before)
exp - 139 sec (I think 127 is my best…not sure)
how many man-hours have we wasted? 