Why does Minesweeper always come down to a 50/50 guess at the end?

[mattmns]

I just went on a long streak in minesweeper... About 2 hrs of my life spent wisely. Note: I play gnome mines, so I have a 1 second advantage, just add a second to my times to get the windows xp minesweeper time. Got a 27, minesweeper 28

minesweeper

 

[franznietzsche]

i love GNOME. SO much better than KDE.

That said, congrats!

Try beating the four in a row game in GNOME. The AI is a little too good, I've beaten once out of about a hundred games. Dang hard.

What size setting was that, i can't quite tell. I just got a 26 on small.

 

[mattmns]

i love GNOME. SO much better than KDE.

That said, congrats!

Try beating the four in a row game in GNOME. The AI is a little too good, I've beaten once out of about a hundred games. Dang hard.

What size setting was that, i can't quite tell. I just got a 26 on small.

OMG I know, I hate that 4 in a row game. On easy it is almost impossible to beat, and I have not even tried any of the other levels. I beat it once after at least one hundred tries, same as you it seems. Even when I hit hint non stop the other person wins, if it is not a tie. That ai is rigged like hell lol.

Ohh and that was intermediate (40 mines).

edit.. yeah I too like gnome over kde. However, as you can tell, my desktop is not custom at all, it is all stock , I just reinstalled a few days ago.

 

[franznietzsche]

OMG I know, I hate that 4 in a row game. On easy it is almost impossible to beat, and I have not even tried any of the other levels. I beat it once after at least one hundred tries, same as you it seems. Even when I hit hint non stop the other person wins, if it is not a tie. That ai is rigged like hell lol.

Ohh and that was intermediate (40 mines).

edit.. yeah I too like gnome over kde. However, as you can tell, my desktop is not custom at all, it is all stock , I just reinstalled a few days ago.

I didn't do much customization, mainly because i planned on switching to slackware first anyway, only to find that the 2.4 kernel that slack 10.0 uses will never recognize my hard drive no matter what i do (sata). The normal fixes for sata drives don't work with mine. So I'm stuck on fedora for now. Not that that's such a bad thing, but still.

 

[gravenewworld]

I have no idea how in the hell to play mine sweeper but my roomate is a master at it. he can put it on the highest level, which is i think 99 mines, and can beat it in like 80 seconds i think. on the small one, with 10 mines, he can beat in like 4 seconds.

 

[franznietzsche]

I have no idea how in the hell to play mine sweeper but my roomate is a master at it. he can put it on the highest level, which is i think 99 mines, and can beat it in like 80 seconds i think. on the small one, with 10 mines, he can beat in like 4 seconds.

Thats crazy. I don't think i can move my mouse around that fast.

 

[mattmns]

I have no idea how in the hell to play mine sweeper but my roomate is a master at it. he can put it on the highest level, which is i think 99 mines, and can beat it in like 80 seconds i think. on the small one, with 10 mines, he can beat in like 4 seconds.

Those are some really good times, I am terrible at expert (99) my scores usually are about 120-130

 

[franznietzsche]

Those are some really good times, I am terrible at expert (99) my scores usually are about 120-130

st least you beat expert. I was looking at about 2:30 for intermediate, then i died.

 

[mattmns]

Hmm, you know that if you mark(flag) a mine, and you have a #1 that is next to it you can push the middle mouse button (on that #1) and it will take care of all the spaces that the #1 touches. The same principle works with #2s, #3s, #4s, etc. You just need to make sure you have all of the mines marked; for example, if you want to middle mouse click a #2, you need to have the right two mines flagged. You do know about the right click to mark a flag right? Read the little help->contents thing, it has some good beginner tips in it. You should be able to beat intermediate (40 mines) in under 1:30 after a little bit of practice.

 

[franznietzsche]

Hmm, you know that if you mark(flag) a mine, and you have a #1 that is next to it you can push the middle mouse button (on that #1) and it will take care of all the spaces that the #1 touches. The same principle works with #2s, #3s, #4s, etc. You just need to make sure you have all of the mines marked; for example, if you want to middle mouse click a #2, you need to have the right two mines flagged. You do know about the right click to mark a flag right? Read the little help->contents thing, it has some good beginner tips in it. You should be able to beat intermediate (40 mines) in under 1:30 after a little bit of practice.

yeah marking is no problem, i just didn't know there was a way to fast click all the squares around a number. that would easily cut my time in half

 

[gravenewworld]

One way that my roomate is so fast at it is that he presses the right and left mouse buttons at the same time. Doing so causes a mine to be flagged and all the boxes around the mine to be opened. I don't know if anyone knew this already...

 

[mattmns]

Yeah if you press the right click and left click at the same time it does the same action as the middle mouse button would do. However, that is a good tip, because I usually use the middle mouse button, so this could save me some time, brb going to go for a new record.

Thanks, that is a good tip.

 

[MathStudent]

The game has a major flaw though... no matter how good you are,, you usually end up in a situation where you have to take a 50/50 guess at it. It's usually the last blocks left where you have a square of four undetermined "blocks" and with two possibilities and no way to determine it by the numbers. I think it sucks that after all that clicking it still comes down to a 1:2 chance of winning.

 

[mattmns]

The game has a major flaw though... no matter how good you are,, you usually end up in a situation where you have to take a 50/50 guess at it. It's usually the last blocks left where you have a square of four undetermined "blocks" and with two possibilities and no way to determine it by the numbers. I think it sucks that after all that clicking it still comes down to a 1:2 chance of winning.

lol I hate that too, that is why I usually play intermediate because there are not many guesses. It really sucks when you have not yet beat expert and you keep losing on some 50/50 guess at the end.