Advanced Minesweeper
datagenetics.com
Advanced Minesweeper
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Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#2Someone ought to write something to empirically test this assertion by clicking on the various possible locations.
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#3Someone ought to write something to empirically test this assertion by clicking on the various possible locations.
I'd be willing to bet that in the real world a corner is actually the worst choice. It may be the most likely to get blank spaces, but its probably also more likely to box you in, and only gives you one direction of attack.
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#4I would say the goal is not to have the highest probability of triggering a cascade, but rather, some combination of:
- high probability of triggering a cascade
- high probability of that cascade being "useful", that is, of being able to work outward from the cascade you opened. (Clicking on the empty corner and getting 1-3-1 on its borders means you still have to guess to escape the corner.)
- high probability of not leaving difficult areas for the end. (Coin flips are most likely to occur in corners and edges; in the middle of the board, you usually have information from multiple directions. It's still possible to be forced to guess in the middle, but it happens far less often.)
As a result, the strategy I've chosen on expert boards (based on experience, without particularly robust statistical backing) is to click the corners sequentially until I get one that allows me to open up more than a few squares. I occasionally lose a game on the second or third click this way, but I don't lose very many on late coin flips.
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#5Speaking as someone who has spent WAY too much time playing minesweeper -- Early on I came to a similar conclusion (though without doing the actual math) and started clicking on corners initially. I soon discovered, as most people do, that corners are much more likely to expand out into a tiny opening that you can only follow for a short time before you're forced to make a "coin toss" move. If the goal is to make a _usable_ blob, clicking in the middle is best.
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#6Speaking as someone who has spent WAY too much time playing minesweeper -- Early on I came to a similar conclusion (though without doing the actual math) and started clicking on corners initially. I soon discovered, as most people do, that corners are much more likely to expand out into a tiny opening that you can only follow for a short time before you're forced to make a "coin toss" move. If the goal is to make a _…
Do you think this is because the blob found in the middle is likely to have more perimeter squares than edge or corner selections?
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#7There're some gems on DataGenetics' blog. Highly recommended.
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#8Although I have no idea since I have never seen the code, I'm pretty sure there's no way to hit a bomb on your first click. I'm played enough (MS Windows) Minesweeper and have never, ever hit a bomb on the first click.
As a side note, Minesweeper the first game I ever programmed was for my intro C class in college using SRGP[1] as the graphics library. Thinking back, it was a tough project. The Minesweeper logic wasn't so bad but doing the graphics was the most work. In hindsight, it shouldn't have taken more than a couple hours to code but took everyone a fair amount of time. Of course we didn't know what they hell we were doing. Fun stuff.
EDIT: After searching around it appears there is code to prevent the first-click bomb in a rather novel way[2].
[1] http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~tik86120/X_srgp.html [2] http://www.sanchitkarve.com/blog/2009/01/does-minesweeper-ch...
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#9Another priority with the first click is that you won't be entirely surrounded by mines and wires, wires being indeterminate, entangled chains of unrevealed spaces.
I'm pretty sure a probability can be worked out for rate of occurrence and length of a wire - but with the corner strategy, you're minimizing the likely amount of perimeter by 3/4. That's got to make a "coin flip" situation more likely, which has to be weighed against the more likely reveal.
If you don't get a reveal on the first click, you end up just clicking again a few times and restarting if you reveal a mine. Doesn't waste more than a second in any case. Not sure if that's really meaningful unless there's a no restart rule, or you're being graded by the percentage of games finished that are started.
Re: Advanced Minesweeper
#10Speaking as someone who has spent WAY too much time playing minesweeper -- Early on I came to a similar conclusion (though without doing the actual math) and started clicking on corners initially. I soon discovered, as most people do, that corners are much more likely to expand out into a tiny opening that you can only follow for a short time before you're forced to make a "coin toss" move. If the goal is to make a _…
Speaking as the same sort of person (96 secs on expert :-) ), I agree that the most useful strategy is to click in the middle. This is because the cost of restarting is practically nothing for your first few clicks (no sunk time costs), so what you should really be optimizing is trying to get the most information about the board as soon as possible. All the more so because optimally your whole game will proceed logically from that first cascade. Bigger cascades are less likely to dead end, meaning you'll be less likely to have to guess at random again later (when you actually will have sunk time costs).