The Minesweeper game has been bundled with Windows since version 3.1 back in 1992. It predates Windows, of course, having been a computer game popular in the mainframe days back in the 1960s and 1970s.
I’ve been a Minesweeper fan for a while. It’s a logic puzzle, and I enjoy logic puzzles.
The game proves a handy diversion for me while I’m writing: I tend to write in frenzied bursts, pounding out a few pages at a time in a slug of key-clacking energy. Then I need a break. I can walk around the office, visit Facebook, obtain a beverage, or more often I pop up a Minesweeper game for a quick round.
Lately it seems like I’ve been playing Minesweeper to the point of obsession. You may find this choice to play Minesweeper odd, because most Windows users really can’t stand the game.
Minesweeper is simple enough: Click on a square and pray that there isn’t a mine or BOOM, the game is over. If you’re lucky, you see a blank square. Otherwise you see a number, which indicates that adjacent squares contain mines. Using math or logic or just random chance, you try to identify all the mines in the grid, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. A successful completion to a game of Minesweeper.
Perhaps my obsession lies with the proposition that every game is theoretically winnable. I mean, if you plan your logic properly, you pretty much know where the mines are located. Being aware that’s possible to win every game increases my desire to play.
Then again, too many games I’ve played have ended with a random guess: The mine can be here or there and no amount of logic can solve the puzzle. So it’s click-boom or click-yeah! Either way, I end up playing another round.
Still, I like the game because I can pop-up its window, play a round and either get frustrated that I’m losing or pleased that I beat the sucker. That’s pretty much the essence of what makes a good computer game as far as I’m concerned.
Im a minesweeper addict, although I only play in on Linux because gnome minesweeper allows resizeable window whereas Windows minesweeper is stuck on that tiny size. My record for the small size board is 9 seconds, my average is about 20 seconds. The largest size board is very difficult and is so densely populated with mines that I hit a mine half the time on the opening move.
Comment by BradC — January 15, 2014 @ 11:44 am
That’s one interesting thing about the Windows Minesweeper game: The algorithm allows that the first click is always safe. It may not be the best click, and there’s many games where I’ve not been able to calculate a safe second click, but that’s a nice touch.
Supposedly there’s a cheat in the game where you can get another hint on whether a mine is present or not. I’ve never used it. No, I prefer to blow up.
Comment by admin — January 15, 2014 @ 12:28 pm