Freecell

For a while, I was addicted to regular old computer solitaire. Then I found Freecell, and the obsession was far worse. Then I got my dad addicted to it. Boy was that a mistake. My mom hasn't seen him since (this was about 6 years ago ).

To give you an idea of how bad it is, this is a picture of what he's done in less than a year:

There was a coordinated effort on the Internet to complete every game in FreeCell. They've finished now -- one of the games is provably impossible.

My g/f's dad is still working through them, though (one at a time, in order).

I stay away from the card games now. Minesweeper is my game.

for a while i was hooked on chips challenge. it got to be so annoying and repetitive that i quit. it was a fun puzzle one. my record for beginner on minesweeper is 12 seconds.

beginner on minesweeper

The problem I have with Minesweeper is that there's too narrow a window between, on the one hand, so few mines that you don't get to figure out anything clever, and on the other hand so many mines that most games are provably impossible (i.e. reduced to guesswork). When I played the RiscOS version, I tended to use about 20%-25% mines, which IIRC is more than the hardest level in Windows Minesweeper.

Automated solution of Minesweeper is easy, if computationally intensive, if attacked by brute force: enumerate all combinations of mine/blank along the frontier. The RiscOS one did this (if you held down various magic keys) and coloured the squares black for definitely-mine, white for definitely-blank, and shades of grey proportional to the likelihood if several mine-blank combinations fulfilled the boundary conditions.

I spent hours on KDE Sokoban, though. And I must give FX-Repton a try someday...

Peter

I used to play Freecell rather compulsively in college, but I played online at www.freecell.com. That way I could play anywhere without losing my statistics.... If you have a color palm os handheld, www.red-mercury.com is the only way to go. (Its ok in greyscale but really cool in color)

Heh, 7 seconds on beginner

The real key is to always start with the 4 corners. If they are all clear, then the chances of a non-guesswork solution increases significantly. If they aren't then you didn't waste much time.

I used to find that I encountered more "impossible" levels than I do now. It still happens, but you can generally narrow your guesswork down to some high probabilities.

I suppose that the thing I like about minesweeper is that it exercises a person's deductive ability, a feature lacking in the card games. So few people I meet actually "get" minesweeper that I'm amazed it was ever included with windows.

My g/f's dad is still working through them, though (one at a time, in order).

One of the instructors here at work got a Compaq iPaq PDA for the sole reason of being able to go through them like this. The Freecell game for PocketPC uses the exact same number sequence that the Windows desktop version does, and even has a option to go through them in order.

PySol also does them in the same order, plus it has basically every other solitaire card game ever invented. All for free.

Yeah, I remember reading about that effort a while back. I was really amazed that of all those games, only one single game was absolutely impossible. I should get my awful college statistics teacher to ponder over that one for a while

My dad isn't going through them one by one (I think). He usually gets them at random, and plays each one until he wins.

The guesswork factor is also why I stopped playing Minesweeper. The problem is that if the guesswork is eliminated, the game is incredibly simple. That's why the "advanced" mode for the Windows version is so hard, you always end up blindly clicking away. Plus, you learn little strategies. For example, I found that if you had a flat wall of numbers, and you had a 1-2-1 pattern, there was never a mine under the 2.

By the way, I never figured it out, what the heck is the purpose of marking squares in minesweeper?

By the way, I never figured it out, what the heck is the purpose of marking squares in minesweeper?

So you can mark where you think the mines are - making it easy to see the squares you have to figure out. It also protects the square from hamfisted players from accidentally clicking on a mine they knew was there!

Gareth

Minesweeper isn't a game, it's a religion.

There is only guessing in the most extreme of uncertain situations. Everything else can be deduced by simple random clicking (to start), simple 1-to-1 relationships with blocks, and then the complex multi-variable block forcasting. It's tough to explain, but if you have more than one unknown, you can hypothesize the outcome of the situation based on where the other unknowns MAY be.

Sure, it's totally linear and simple, but it will twist your brain for a little if you realize that pure guesswork only happens only 5% of the time outside of the first 10 seconds of a game. Pure guess work is really pretty rare.

I really disagree. I understand what's behind the game, but I believe that guesswork comes in a lot more often than you say it does. It just depends on how many mines you have in how big an area.

Exactly. It seems that more often than not, I come down to this situation (%=bomb, X=uncleared):

%%2|

%XX|

2XX|

---+

with two bombs left, which is just guesswork. Not to mention the fact that at least your first move will always be guesswork.

By the way, I never figured it out, what the heck is the purpose of marking squares in minesweeper?

Also, the Windows version allows you to click both mouse buttons. If you've marked enough mines around the square you've clicked on, it'll clear the other surrounding squares in one go.

I usually play by: right-click, right-click, both-click, right-click...

And I finished Easy in 3 seconds once. Two clicks.

I knew what the marking does and why it might be used, but I can't understand why someone would use it. I'd think if you couldn't keep track of where a mine is, the game is going to be hard anyway

And yeah, that both-mouse-click feature is a real time saver.

No image editing took place, you cynical lot!

A.

I spent hours on KDE Sokoban, though.

Sokoban is one of the games I spent most times with. There's one level in there which 3 of my collueges reported as impossible; It took me a few days to get the answer...
The problem with minesweeper is that it becomes too routine. Once you get it, all games are the same...

Sokoban is also available for every platform I think. I even got a real cool sed-version...

When my Rex 6000 was working, I had Sokoban on that too. But I also had Minesweeper Hell, I had Freecell, but it was very hard to see.

One way to make Minesweeper harder is to use only the "clear" button (button1 in most versions), never marking any mines until you've cleared all known-clear squares.

Bitt: Yeah, that situation you drew is the fundamental guesswork situation. I've seen that rather rarely though. I can generally get through a few games on Expert without seeing that. Of course, more complex multi-variable guesswork situations arrise, but they are far beyond my sickness-numbed mind's ability to think up.

I do that already. I've never marked a mine before. It's not hard to keep track.

My roomate in college and I used to race playing freecell. Each sit at our computer, select game, yell GO and whoever finishes it first wins.

BTW, it was game 11982. There are only 8 deals out of the first 10 million that are impossible.

"By the way, I never figured it out, what the heck is the purpose of marking squares in minesweeper?"

Ok, this would explain things a little. Marking mines makes the game MUCH easier, and more fun. It isn't, however, about keeping track of the mines as much as it is about allowing you to use the Right-Left click functionality. The key, as someone else mentioned earlier, is that when you click the Left and Right buttons at once on a number, and the correct number of mines are flagged bordering that number (like 1 mine is flagged bordering a '1' squar), then all the non-bomb squares bordering the number will be cleared off. If you make a mistake and there are two somehow flagged, it doesn't uncover any squares because you are obviously in error. This prevents you from making mistakes, and makes the game go much quicker. I also find that it helps my thinking because I think of "finding mines" rather than "removing squares." Once I figured out this trick, I ended up hardly ever having to guess and getting much better scores. I would actually go as far as to say, if you aren't using the Left-Right together clicking, you aren't playing the game right.

If you doubt me on this, at least try it once or twice. You'll be surprised how much better you do.

Interesting. I'd never seen the L+R click feature before. Just tried it. One learns something new every day.

Wait a minute, I just realized, it wasn't the marking of the bombs that I found useless, it's that question mark thing that the Windows version has. I was really confused because I haven't played the game in so long. I always marked the bombs, and always used the right-left click feature. I was just mixed up Sorry!

Ah, yes. Now on that I will agree with you completely.

At least I helped Tony figure out something new!

And BTW, on the 16-bit version, open minsweeper and immediately type xyzzy[enter][shift] The top left pixel will change to black when you are over a mine and to white when you are over a free space. Does NOT work with 32 bit.

On freecell, hit [ctrl][shift][f10] and take a peek at that.

On Solitaire, [ctrl][alt][shift]-and a click will turn only 1 card even when in 3 click vegas mode.

I know, I know... It isn't fun if you cheat, but I remember reading those a LONG time ago...


Oh yeah, in Minesweeper (32 bit), if you hold on the escape key when you clear a mine, the timer stops.

I'd never seen the L+R click feature before.

Given the L+R (which is actually Windows' way of saying mouse button 3) and the ``xyzzy'' cheat, I'd say that whoever at Microsoft programmed Minesweeper was an old school computer scientist, and probably spent his prior days in front of real computers.