Inspired by this thread: [thread=298627]Minesweeper - is luck involved or not?[/thread]
So, in windows minesweeper or similar games, what’s your opening strategy?? In particular, do you always play your second square near your first, or maybe go ‘fishing’ far away?? Hunt until you find a beachhead of clear squares to start from, or die trying?? I’m interested particularly in the ‘expert’ level or similar nasty conditions.
Myself, I’m an incurable hunter… especially since I get much less frustrated losing a few games in a row right in a beginning, if the hunting is bad, than later on, so I generally hold out for a promising beach-head. Even on expert level, there are usually a few oddly-shaped clear areas, and it seems quite frequent that I do manage to hit one.
Does anyone here do it differently? I’m not sure what you could deduce from two squares next to each other that each have two or more mines nearby, say, if you were unlucky enough to get that.
Though I love making incredibly sophisticated deductions in minesweeper, I have to admit that I’m always grateful for the supremely easy ones, like working my way in from interior corners.
Personally I cheat. I usually do a 3 second Hail Mary of random clicking. If it explodes a mine then I lose, of course, but if it’s successful it usually opens up 20 or so spaces and I’m able to proceed.
What I hate is when you get down to the last three or so mines and you have no choice but to pure & T guess.
Top left corner, bottom right corner, top right corner, bottom left corner. As needed, of course - sometimes the first or second click clears out enough to go on.
It’s been ages since I played. Or had a computer that had it installed. Damn work PC’s that get stripped down.
On expert do the flying blitz of hitting a bunch of squares toward each end to get two beach heads. That’s the start, where I make time is to use both hands on the mouse. Makes the double click faster.
I click sequential spots along an edge, usually the top, until I hit a spot that opens up a lot of spaces. Then I immediately go for the recognizeable solutions, like 1-2-1 or 1-2-2-1 or 2-3-3-2. You absolutely have to use the two-button click to make good time. For those who didn’t realize it was there, if you click both mouse buttons on a number that you’ve marked the correct number of adjacent squares, it opens all the other unmarked squares. It’s also a quick check to see if you marked enough spaces, because it won’t work if you didn’t.
My average time is around 130 on Expert, and my personal best was 95. I die a lot (maybe 9 out of 10 games), and keep restarting until I get a finished game before I can stop.
I only play the beginner level. I never play intermediate or expert, because a) despite the name, it isn’t really a matter of how good you are but rather how lucky you are, b) I’m a member of the MTV-Sound-Bite generation, and I don’t have a lot of patience, and most importantly c) I prefer winning.
However, I do have my own silly rule that toughens things up a bit: I never use the flags. This works great on the Microsoft version; when you’ve removed all the non-bombs, you win. But on other versions, such as the one on Linux, and the one on Palm, you have to put flags on them otherwise the clock keeps ticking. (lame)
Interior corners? Are you playing on some kind of a concave polygon? I always do what Aesiron does. I’m not a dedicated player. I only play on easy and my best score for that is like 40 seconds.
I do the same thing Sampiro does. I hit random boxes as fast as I can until a big section opens up, then I play it by reasoning out which have the flags.
Top-left corner, Top-right corner, Bottom-right corner, Bottom-left corner in Beginner or Intermediate, though I rarely have to go that far before something good opens up. When I play expert, I go for the random clicking option. A couple years back I was addicted to this game. My scores were 7-26-140ish. I don’t remember what my best on expert was exactly, but I never play expert. Far too much guessing involved. On any good game in Intermediate, you’ll only have to guess 3 or 4 times, tops–usually only once or twice.
For the first few clicks luck is obviously involved after that, no. I haven’t played minesweeper in a long time as it is only on my old computer but if I remember
Beginnier: slightly below 10, I think 7 and luck was very much involved.
Intermediate: Around 40, give or take 5 seconds.
Advanced: Low 100’s. I think it was right around the two minute mark.
I disagree. Frequently on beginner and intermediate, and almost always on expert, you will get to situations where you have to make a 50-50 guess to win, or at least to keep going. Oddly enough, I seem to guess right much more than 50% of the time. I haven’t made a scientific study of it, but that’s my impression. Now, if I could just extend that to the lottery …
If you could design minefields, I’d put in about ten patterns like this:
XXX
XOX
XXX
I’d have a mine in the center square of five of them and the other five would have empty center squares. From the outside, it’s impossible to determine which is which. So you’d have to guess at random which five were the empty ones. One wrong guess and you’re done.
