I know you've played minesweeper, and I know that little, insignificant fact cause it's all part of the whole extra perceptiony thing associated with the game. I know you're not like my ignorant, brain-dead co-workers who never saw minesweeper in their lives (even though it has been included with Microsoft's Windows forever) before they saw me playing it at work.
As you play minesweeper you can logically locate most of the mines without blowing the game, but sometimes you end up with a situation where there are two equally possible mine locations, and it's just the luck of the draw (or the flip of the coin), and often, you choose wrong, as happened in the example below (from here):
If you look at the far left side of the mine field you'll see how the game ended, with two options, and with no way to logically decide between them, leaving only guessing as the way to the solution. But in that scenario you can lose the toss, and thus the game.
Is there a way out of such an unappealing finish? I am now going to give you my secret, something I reserve for just such otherwise impossible circumstances. This method works for me about 90% of the time. I run the cursor over a square and its neighboring square or squares, and I wait until I get a feeling. The feeling itself is hard to describe, but I know at that moment which square is mine-free, before I've clicked on it. Has anyone else experienced this with this particular game? I am curious to hear opinions on what is going on when I do this.
As an aside, I have one computer with Windows Vista, and was unaware until today that it contained the redone (but not improved) version of the game. I was also unaware of any controversy the game had generated (but knowing how stupid liberals are, why should I be surprised?) and that you have the option in the facelifted version of locating flowers instead of mines:
How an innocuous little game like Minesweeper can spur a controversy is a surprise in itself. But it did. The problem with Minesweeper is that it deals with mines, which are not a very pleasant topic, particularly for those living in North America. Dave Vronay, the then Research Manager for the Windows User Experience Compliance team, wrote in a blog post back in 2006.
There have always been a small but persistent group of users who disliked minesweeper as a concept because they felt it trivialized the problem of land mines. For those of us living in North America, land mines are an abstract entity that you really only see in a movie, but in many parts of the world people are killed or maimed by mines on a daily basis. Over the years, these users have repeatedly asked us to either remove minesweeper or change the concept from landmines to something a little less obnoxious.
Microsoft decided to address these concerns when they are doing a general redesign for Windows Vista by creating a politically correct Minesweeper game. The company added an alternative game style called “Flower Garden” that allowed players to change the mines into flowers. This option is available in Windows Vista and 7.- The Minesweeper Controversy: How Flower Garden came into Windows Vista
Can't political correctness leave us all alone at least when it comes to the innocent pleasure of an innocuous game of logic? Apparently not.
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