The Authoritative Minesweeper Guestbook

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Viewing Page 10 of 53 (Total Entries: 5262)
Oct 3rd 2006 at 02:08:49 AM
Name:  

Schu

Comments:  

@ Damien: Lucasz's time and a few Lanyje vids were probably all that were around when you looked that were any good at all. And some nono games too.

I quite like this though: vista minesweeper vid (probably from the beta) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjY-lZ1axLU

Minesweeper the movie: nice parody on over-edited frag movies or something. Funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmRle9pX50E

So Damien, mind if I post your 40?

   
Oct 3rd 2006 at 02:05:52 AM
Name:  

Thomas

Comments:  

@Schu: MEMEME!!!
BTW @Curtis, Id be very interested in your research, and I guess as nobody is saying anything nobody minds if you publish the results

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Oct 3rd 2006 at 12:46:10 AM
Name:  

damien

Comments:  

junior ranking: i'm trying to collect ages for players, but it'll take a while to set up. you can see i mentioned the idea last week in the guestbook.

youtube: i'm impressed your vids are getting so much attention schu...i did a check two weeks ago and there were only about 12 vids, all poor quality and pretty slow. few of them had more than 20 hits (nor did they deserve to).

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 11:06:11 PM
Name:  

Gene

Best expert:  

learn french

Best intermediate:  

learn french

Best beginner:  

friend

Comments:  

Good stuff. You should make a french version of this site.
http://www.learnfrench2007.com

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 10:29:30 PM
Name:  

Schu

Comments:  

@ DB: no problem! I might add, you're already up to 13, 10 and 2 views on your exp, int and 56 vids respectively, though 1 of them was me checking it worked. Pretty quick stuff

Who else wants to be famous?

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 10:15:01 PM
Name:  

Daniel Brim

Comments:  

@Schu:

Thanks, man.

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 10:12:07 PM
Name:  

Schu

Comments:  

Just uploaded some of DBs videos to youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzY-MhMWQRY - 53 sec expert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RAJsGGDFmc - 56 sec expert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ku2gcEyGVY - 14 sec int NF

So c'mon guys, my expert record has got more than 100 views and even my 72 NF NN has gotten over 50, surely way more than the amount of downloads my files have gotten from these sites. This could become a nice feature to one of the sites BTW, linking to youtube for people that don't want to download the software yet. I'm happy to do it, but I need permission, so either e-mail me, talk to me on IRC or tell me here or on Detrusors forum or something.

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 08:23:53 PM
Name:  

Schu

Best expert:  

72 NF NN

Best intermediate:  

21 NF NN

Best beginner:  

3 NF NN

Comments:  

**** you Dennis!

Oh well, I had the WR for long enough

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 07:26:47 PM
Name:  

Nathan

Comments:  

I'm 16 too.

Email Email    
Oct 2nd 2006 at 06:42:48 PM
Name:  

Robbie

Best expert:  

83

Best intermediate:  

23

Best beginner:  

3

Comments:  

any idea if theres a ranking of juniors anywhere?
im 16

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 06:31:12 PM
Name:  

Nathan

Comments:  

I have a question. Is it statisically possible to complete an intermediate or expert with one click, like a beginner? Or is the game fixed so that doesn't happen?

, Nate

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 05:37:29 PM
Name:  

Arjádre

Best beginner:  

1.471=>1.471x2=>1.571 IOE

Comments:  

w00t! 14 clicks on a 22 3BV board!

@Pat: the higher the 3BV, the harder the board, generally speaking. Most time records are done with 3BV<5 on beginner, 3BV<45 on intermediate, and 3BV<150 on expert.

VC=5J88 I swear I've seen that before.

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 05:27:24 PM
Name:  

Pat

Best expert:  

145

Best intermediate:  

34

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

Hey I just went to my Grnadma's house today and they I looked at there old computer and I saw my first ever minesweeper high scores! They bought a new one in 1999 so that means I must have been 6 years old when I got the records of 17, 170, 303 . And what is the purpose of 3BV and 3BV/s because I know what they mean but what does it tell you about the minesweeper game or board?

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 04:36:13 PM
Name:  

Tam Minh Bui

Best expert:  

20,86 RQP

Comments:  

Reduced my RQP from yesterday's game:

62,29 on a 183 w/ 2,98 3bv/s.

I also got a pretty nifty 39 board on beginner and landed a 6,72 3bv/s on it (@6,80 seconds), which makes it my 2nd best 3bv/s overall other than my current record.

    Website Website    
Oct 2nd 2006 at 03:06:53 PM
Name:  

AreOut

Comments:  

Hehe Ive thought Schu has the best NN NF exp score

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 02:58:09 PM
Name:  

Dennis Lütken

Best expert:  

67.05 NN NF

Best intermediate:  

15.67 NN NF

Best beginner:  

2.27 NN NF

Comments:  

Hey. Those are the times as they would be in clone version - just for comparison. The 15 was done on a 50 3bv board and the 67 was with a 3bv/s of 2.95!!! The 2.27 was a 3 3bv board so that's not really special but still the best so far I think. ;o) Curtis, I'd like to be on your list as well. If you need me to send you the videos, then I can do that, of course, but I don't think you'll be able to see that I did them all with no numbers... The were all non-flagging, of course! I guess some of these are NN NF records.

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 02:56:09 PM
Name:  

Daniel Brim

Comments:  

I'm going to throw a wrench in this whole "cycles" thing, and possibly in my credibility as well.

My best friend, one that I trust very highly, just saw a 3x3 square in XP beginner. He's been playing minesweeper for 3 hours, so didn't know that the odds of this are 1/1.9 billion. He F2d the board. He then recreated it in Paint, except sans sunglasses.

I believe this person entirely. I would trust this person with my life (insert more cliches here).

URL to the screenshot is below. Note: it IS a reproduction. I don't care. This person's previous best was 70 seconds. (AKA did not know why that would be so special).

I realize that the odds of people believing me (and him) are about as strong as the odds of the board occurring, but if it means anything, I fully believe it.

    Website Website    
Oct 2nd 2006 at 01:41:13 PM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

Whoops, did I need to email? I didn't think I did last time...

To confirm, my best times are now 2.237, 17.99 and 62.11

Email Email    
Oct 2nd 2006 at 01:21:55 PM
Name:  

joni

Comments:  

Hey Damien, thanks for correcting my name's spelling . It surely looks better now

As I was glancing through the rankings I noticed that several players names are chopped off. Apparently your php script has problems dealing with names that have letters with umlauts or accents... like Dennis Lütken or Grégoire Duffez for example. This happens both on the World and on the Country rankings. As far as I can remember, the names were displayed correctly before this update...
just wanted to inform you about that, in case you have missed it. Keep up the good work

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 09:30:55 AM
Name:  

Schu

Comments:  

@ Banzhaf:

http://www.planete-demineur.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=822

this should give you all the info you need!

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 09:27:02 AM
Name:  

Thomas

Comments:  

@Christoph:
I hope so, I need competition :D Where are you/when will you come back to vienna? I want to meet you again, a local tournament would be great, I know a couple of people who I think might want to come.

Also, I just had one of my best int periods ever.

I dont have time to play a lot as my parents took away my laptop, Im at school now.

However, my wrist is telling me that that might be a good idea.
I got 3 17s, a 16, and an 18 on a 57 3bv board.
And I think there may be more to come...

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 07:39:28 AM
Name:  

Christoph

Comments:  

grats Thomas, looks like time to strike back soon

@Elmar/Curtis: of course this formula cannot work. One would need to divide by something like a common divisor (which doesn't exist in this case). You need to ask after how many boards you hit the starting point again. That will depend on the number of mines and it's prime factors.

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 05:50:09 AM
Name:  

Elmar

Comments:  

*plz don't hesitate to send me...

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 04:38:19 AM
Name:  

Elmar

Comments:  

@Curtis: Ah, and if you don't know if you should present your knowledge publicly, don't plz hesitate to me (as a trustworthy member of the IMC ) an e-mail.

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 04:26:22 AM
Name:  

Elmar

Comments:  

@Curtis: I agree that there is no (new) harm in publishing the mine placing algorithm. I for my part would be very interested to know it.
Concerning your formula to estimate cycle lenght, it looks like a pretty bad estimate to me. According to your formula beg cycle would be roughly 4 times longer than int cycles while we know it's rather the opposite.
IMO the cycle length is for a great part dependent on the exact fit of mines needed for a number of boards (i.e. for 1 shift) and multples of the RNG period.

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 04:09:22 AM
Name:  

Banzhaf

Best expert:  

74

Best intermediate:  

22

Comments:  

year Schu, the no-numbers is funny
Now I downloaded Minesweeper X (cool, no custom restrictions) and have some questions
Do I have to make videos with an extern program or is the skin saved within the video?
And are Minesweeper X vids accepted as proof for records?

   
Oct 2nd 2006 at 01:57:13 AM
Name:  

Thomas

Best intermediate:  

15,20

Comments:  

Heres the vid :D
Ill write more about the game later!
VC=MANE

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Oct 2nd 2006 at 01:00:15 AM
Name:  

Thomas

Best intermediate:  

17,04-->15,20!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comments:  

I DID IT!
BEST AUSTRIAN!
And austrian int record :D
Ill upload the vid and write more later, Im at school and the lessons about to start.

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Oct 1st 2006 at 11:56:10 PM
Name:  

Schu

Comments:  

I've finally posted my vids on youtube thanks to a nice video program I got with my modem.

Here are my:

58 exp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9D-aQzRuU4

69 exp NF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ3ACiTHbrs

72 exp NF no-numbers (world record for now, because no-one else tries): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMfk54lJ5q0

We need more vids on there, so if other people want me to submit their videos, send me files, I'll capture the vid and upload it if you like. E-mail is below.

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Oct 1st 2006 at 10:09:15 PM
Name:  

Tam Minh Bui

Best expert:  

59 (x3)

Comments:  

59.67 on a 153 board...

I had 60x3 before hitting 59, now I have three 59's. I hope that I can avoid a syndrome once again.

    Website Website    
Oct 1st 2006 at 10:24:59 AM
Name:  

Dmitriy

Comments:  

great stuff, arj

@dave: welcome back, dude

   
Oct 1st 2006 at 09:30:58 AM
Name:  

Arjádre

Best expert:  

2.774=>2.905 3BV/s, 26x7=>25=>24=>23 RQP

Best beginner:  

.72x=>.714 RQP

Comments:  

I had a great day of sweeping yesterday, as Tommy predicted ... 3BV/s, RQP, and IOS records on expert, flagging 3BV/s, RQP, and IOS records on int as well as my second best RQP overall, and an RQP record on beginner. I also got BAT/OBV/s records on all 3 levels: 62.68/2.76 expert, 19.9997/3.29 int (way to sub20!), and 3.45/6.12 beginner.

Time@3BV@3BV/s@RQP@IOS@IOE for some notable games:

Expert:
60.402@148@2.491@24.243@1.22351@0.523
62.234@162@2.646@23.524@1.23644@0.555
72.937@209@2.905@25.105@1.24944@0.647

Intermediate:
16.674@44@2.807@5.94@1.37507@0.543
17.411@43@2.62@6.645@1.34427@0.551
17.474@41@2.489@7.021@1.32543@0.5
18.602@50@2.841@6.549@1.36402@0.61
18.64@48@2.721@6.85@1.34877@0.545
20.098@60@3.142@6.397@1.38811@0.698
22.258@75@3.528@6.309@1.41245@0.743

Beginner:
2.783@5@2.804@0.992@2.78306@0.714
3.079@9@4.329@0.711@3.00214@0.818
3.575@11@4.272@0.837@2.53518@0.733
6.03@23@4.573@1.319@1.94098@0.852

   
Oct 1st 2006 at 07:47:29 AM
Name:  

Dennis Lütken

Comments:  

HEY DAVE!!!

Nice to see you still come around here sometimes. I didn't realise it's been 1½ years since you left. Wow! Time flies! To answer your question about the clone: Most of us still use the clone and a lot of things ha ve happened to it since you left but the game is still just as much fun. Take care Dave!

   
Oct 1st 2006 at 05:05:43 AM
Name:  

AreOut

Comments:  

Wow Dave is alive

   
Oct 1st 2006 at 02:44:23 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

That may be because I don't know the PRNG period But surely that would give the beginner period as the value found ÷ 2 (or is it ×2, I can't think in the morning )? In any case, I think the length of the Expert cycle will make it more or less secure to anyone without a good keybd_event function

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Oct 1st 2006 at 02:34:16 AM
Name:  

Curtis

Comments:  

Maybe I'm not being clear enough? I have the algorithm that the original Minesweeper uses to place mines. Thus, I can end the theories/research, answer Rod's questions, etc. I believe in full disclosure, so I am willing to describe it in as much detail as desired. Maybe you guys don't care because you think it is unethical... so, I will only release the info with the approval of the community. But again I must say that Minesweeper is inherently insecure, and it is not made safer by hiding that. The algorithm is actually very simple and not that hard to find, plus a lot of info is already available online.

I can also give the formula which will determine cycle length estimates (for any board, including expert). The basic form is (pseudo-random number generator period)/(expected # of random numbers needed per board), although there's a quirk in the PRNG that needs to be taken into account.

As Rodrigo explained, when setting up the mines on the board, if a position is occupied then another mine position is generated. To exactly determine the # of mines needed to be generated on average is a little tricky mathematically. (It requires some knowledge of combinatorics.) For an expert board it works out that 110.7438104972 mines are needed to be placed on average (to 10 decimal places).

@Ian: Good job, you seem to have calculated the same formula, although your estimate for the expert cycle length is off by n orders of magnitude (base 2).

   
Oct 1st 2006 at 12:29:35 AM
Name:  

Dave Matson

Best expert:  

74

Best intermediate:  

19

Best beginner:  

3

Comments:  

Hi everyone!

Just popping in to say hi to all of those that I used to converse with on the guestbook!

For those of you who don't know who I am, I used to play minesweeper about a year and a half ago and have since quit. It is nice to see some familiar faces on the guestbook!

Damien, I DID get that email from you a long time ago about putting my name in the records, and I have yet to find my .mvf files to send you the records. I think that I know where they are and will send them to you soon, hopefully.

I was looking through the "dictionary" section of this website...IOS??? Logs in minesweeper? My goodness...what is the purpose of taking the log of the time and the log of the 3bv??? It really seems like things have changed since I used to play!!! Do you guys still use minesweeper clone anymore, or have things moved on since?

Well, just here to touch base. Hope all goes well for everyone! Happy sweeping

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Sep 30th 2006 at 10:24:04 PM
Name:  

Tam Minh Bui

Best expert:  

21.56 -> 21.54 RQP

Comments:  

64.30 on a 189 @ 2.983bv/s (3rd best 3bv/s). I am starting to develop a weird, erratic style of sweeping... sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

    Website Website    
Sep 30th 2006 at 06:44:23 PM
Name:  

Nathan

Comments:  

I think I non-flagged an expert at 111, but I think I can do much better than that.

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Sep 30th 2006 at 06:28:34 PM
Name:  

Pat

Best expert:  

165

Best intermediate:  

34

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

Well, I haven't beaten expert by non-flagging yet, but I'm getting the hang of it.

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Sep 30th 2006 at 03:37:37 PM
Name:  

Jake

Best expert:  

39

Best intermediate:  

9

Comments:  

play brutal

and for DB:

SORIN YOU *** ** ** ** * ** ** ** ***

(end Luke Mode... DB have you met that guy yet???)

   
Sep 30th 2006 at 01:50:49 PM
Name:  

WP

Comments:  

@Ian: to keep playing carefully and accurately without being too darn slow, as you put it, just don’t hesitate.(with that the worst you can do is hover over that fine line) Hesitating for the sake of playing accurately just defeats the purpose.

   
Sep 30th 2006 at 10:30:12 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

Just finished my first expert game playing for accuracy, got 66.60s on a 189!!! (Tis good for me) IOE = 0.418 (previously hovered around 0.3)

I'm finding it's a fine line between playing carefully and accurately, or just being too darn slow

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Sep 30th 2006 at 08:36:03 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

Wow, nice one Arj!

I've been playing Arbiter cheat (trying to copycat Thomas as much as possible ), but nothing happened of interest until this:

/me blasted int game --> Time: 10.15 «» Est Time: 13.43 «» 3BV: 28 (3 «» 3BV/s: 3.05

Whoops

As for real sweeping, I got another 19 (probably about my 8th sub-20) and quite a few 20s, 21s.

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Sep 29th 2006 at 11:20:47 PM
Name:  

Arjádre

Comments:  

IOE vids:
exp: http://www.planete-demineur.com/phpBB2/download.php?id=2139
int: http://www.planete-demineur.com/phpBB2/download.php?id=2140
beginner: http://www.planete-demineur.com/phpBB2/download.php?id=2141

   
Sep 29th 2006 at 10:58:38 PM
Name:  

Arjádre

Best expert:  

.98x=>1.092 IOE

Best intermediate:  

1.329 IOE

Best beginner:  

1.471 IOE

Comments:  

Finally sup1'd on exp, a 117(ack!) on a 214 3bv board (I'll post the vid later). I could have gotten around an 85 or 90 @ 1.02ish IOE had I 1) been awake and 2) tried to go fast. As I write this I notice a spider hanging from my glasses. *squish* It will be hard to sup1.5 on beginner, but I'll keep trying anyway... I'm up to 2.24 O-IOE

   
Sep 29th 2006 at 09:00:10 PM
Name:  

Nathan

Best intermediate:  

23

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

Yes, Pat it takes lots of practice. A lot of if is pattern recognition. You need to be able to recognize patterns and apply your knowledge. Patterns like 1-2-1, or 2-3-2, or 1-2-2-1. Non-flagging is pretty sweet once you get the hang of it, although it can get messy. I do all my intermediates non-flagging and same with my experts, but I've messed up at key times. Keep up the good work!

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Sep 29th 2006 at 06:22:16 PM
Name:  

Daniel Brim

Comments:  

No, a 2 on beginner does not count as a 1. We go as the timer says (insert Jake cursing sorin here). For NF... it takes LOTS of practice... I didn't win my first NF game until my exp score was under 100. Very good, you know chording. Keep that up

   
Sep 29th 2006 at 06:17:08 PM
Name:  

Pat

Best expert:  

165

Best intermediate:  

34

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

I need major help with minesweeper. First of all, if I get a 2 in beginner does that count as a 1 because the timer starts out at 1? And How do you do non-flagging on expert? There are so many boxes to click that I lose time from not doing the left-click-right-click at the same time technique. I'm getting better at minesweeper. Just last week, my records were 2, 41, and 192.

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Sep 29th 2006 at 02:06:41 PM
Name:  

Thomas

Comments:  

Haha, you owe christoph :D
He inspired me in a burger king by playing for efficiency, I tried to use the same style at home and saw that it suited me :D
@DB: I think I can identify with that :D

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Sep 29th 2006 at 01:18:23 PM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

*reads Thomas's post*

*tries efficient play*

*gets lots of 23s at about 2.8 3BV/s*

That works so well! WOW! Thanks so much

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Sep 29th 2006 at 01:16:20 PM
Name:  

Louis

Best beginner:  

4,402 3bv/s --> 4,605 NF

Comments:  

getting closer to 5

   
Sep 29th 2006 at 12:10:41 PM
Name:  

Daniel Brim

Comments:  

My style is not efficiency oriented, but it certainly has efficient flagging, just a lot of superfluous chording

Playing for efficiency does help, but I find that just playing in general helps more, at least for me.

   
Sep 29th 2006 at 11:53:09 AM
Name:  

Nathan

Best expert:  

102

Best intermediate:  

23

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

Ya Damien, an age ranking would be sweet. I think the country ranking is pretty awesome too. By the way how old are you Damien?

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Sep 29th 2006 at 11:49:26 AM
Name:  

Thomas

Comments:  

I remember, you told me in vienna.
I have someone in my school who got a 144 at 10 years.
Sounds like fun!
I dont have a problem with someone knowing my birthday, it only increases the chance of getting presents
15th of december 1990.
BTW@ arj, prepare to break some records
I did when I tried playing for efficiency for the first time, and now my style is totally efficiency-oriented

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Sep 29th 2006 at 11:11:22 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

I think most people would be happy with just giving month/year... and it should really be score sum then age, otherwise it's silly

And AR63 x2 Minute barrier coming soon I hope

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Sep 29th 2006 at 11:04:44 AM
Name:  

damien

Comments:  

any ideas? to make it private the score and the age will be listed (no dates for the score). same qualifications as country rankings (so sub100 is included?). sorted by [age,score] and [score,age]? let me know.

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Sep 29th 2006 at 10:58:08 AM
Name:  

damien

Comments:  

the youngest person i know to sub100 was 9 years old, back in 1997. i'll post his story later (i have a letter). i want to make an age ranking, but i didn't think a lot of you guys wanted to tell me your birthdays. i know the year for about 40 people, and birthdays for about 10. if you guys wnt to send them in, they will be included in my new database (not expected finished for another month), and then i can make an age ranking. good? bad? i've wanted to do this for a long time.


   
Sep 29th 2006 at 10:53:44 AM
Name:  

damien

Comments:  

New WR? 7.445 3bvs on a 19 board in 3.559s. In 10min I got two sup6 then this.

    Website Website    
Sep 29th 2006 at 10:45:29 AM
Name:  

Thomas

Comments:  

ARGH dammit, Ill be 16 in december.
Is it possible that that makes me the youngest active community member?

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Sep 29th 2006 at 09:00:22 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

I'll be 16 in November The article is coming along nicely, but I've been quite busy with schoolwork lately

I got a fairly lucky 63 a few days ago which I was pleased with, but my Int remains at 19 this AR

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Sep 28th 2006 at 08:43:07 PM
Name:  

Arjádre

Best expert:  

58

Best intermediate:  

15

Best beginner:  

1

Comments:  

@all record breakers:
@nate: I'm also 16.

I've been playing in super-slow, super-efficient mode a lot lately. My goal is sup1.5 IOE beginner and sup1 expert. 15-65 so far this AR

   
Sep 28th 2006 at 08:02:23 PM
Name:  

Nathan

Best expert:  

102

Best intermediate:  

23

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

Thanks for the tip Jake, I actually had just looked in to chording earlier in the day. I tried it once and it looked to be handy, but for the time being I want to try no-flagging, but once I'm done experimenting I will probably switch back to flagging and incorporate chording into my sweeping. Thanks for the tip though. Its funny that I posted that I would break my Int. or Exp. time one day soon, because I just got 23 seconds.

, Nate

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Sep 28th 2006 at 07:19:40 PM
Name:  

Jake

Best expert:  

39

Best intermediate:  

9

Comments:  

Nathan - do you know about chording? Clicking both buttons together on a square with a number reveals all squares surrounding it, if you have marked the number of mines corresponding to the number. i.e. if you have one flag around a "1", chording on it reveals the remaining squares.

grats to all setting records - very nice expert, Dennis! I'll play more when I'm not busy screaming around in a vehicular device!

    Website Website    
Sep 28th 2006 at 06:21:19 PM
Name:  

Nathan

Best expert:  

102

Best intermediate:  

25

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

I am adddicted to this game, and I can't find closure until I get under 100 in expert. I'm trying as hard as I can (2-3 hours a day), and for 16 years old, I think I'm not doing too badly. I think my beginner is set for good, but I think I can improve on my Int. 25, and definitely my 102 Exp. I've been watching videos and reading tips, but I decided I am going to try no flagging boards from now on. Flagging was taking too long. I think a sub 100 and sub 25 are in sight.

, Nate

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Sep 28th 2006 at 03:23:32 PM
Name:  

joni

Best intermediate:  

NF 18 -> 16.944

Comments:  

I have bettered my NF skills a lot recently, and I've been trying to get a sup-3 3BV/s on intermediate. I have had several good games with sup-3 estimates, but haven't managed to finish them. I did better my record today though and got to 2.896.
As I was trying I got a 34 3BV game, no huge opening, but 10 of them. I got on a good rythm (with my inaccurate inefficient NF style) and didn't actually realize it was such a low 3BV game until the very end. I was amazed to see I got a 16 . It was my second sub-20 NF, and my second best time ever just one tenth more then my record.
@Tommy I hope your training with low-3BV boards is giving you the desired results. It's funny I was doing the opposite of you (i.e. playing every board as if it was high 3BV to get the 3BV/s highscore) and eventually got a 16
good luck with your attempts to break that 17

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Sep 28th 2006 at 02:56:41 PM
Name:  

Andrew

Best expert:  

93

Best intermediate:  

25

Best beginner:  

3

Comments:  

Working on gettin that combined under 100

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Sep 27th 2006 at 11:33:18 PM
Name:  

Chris Nain

Best expert:  

93 -> 92 (26.09.06)

Best intermediate:  

29 (18.09.06)

Best beginner:  

4 (19.06.06)

Comments:  

A very little update! Under 90 I'm commin'!

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Sep 27th 2006 at 12:25:14 PM
Name:  

manuel heider

Comments:  

just for those who will miss me :
im now for one week on vacation in greece ;-)

@damien got my 4th sup 5, 19.741 on 96 board ;-)

have fun!
manu

   
Sep 27th 2006 at 07:22:00 AM
Name:  

david

Comments:  

i just started game and it is more addicting than crack cocaine..

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Sep 27th 2006 at 02:24:11 AM
Name:  

Dennis Lütken

Comments:  

@Roman: Thanks! I guess I could ask you a similar question: How is it possible to have that many sup-3s and still only have 3.08 as a record? As for your question, I don't really know how to answer it, except sup-3s are very rare for me. I was just lucky to get a huge jump, I guess. I did get a few more sup-3s than are in my clone stats on Detrusor's site but they are still not very common and I haven't really even gotten close to the 3.10 before except with estimates. I'll certainly have a hard time beating this 3.375 3bv/s record but it would, of course, be nice with another WR! Good luck breaking your record, Roman!

   
Sep 27th 2006 at 01:17:46 AM
Name:  

damien

Comments:  

@Brandon: I swear, on all that is honourable and true, you will be listed at the next update.

@Elmar: I accidentally deleted the file, but I found a copy and it is at www.metanoodle.com/minesweeper/DBcycle.html

I find verification codes boring, but mine today is SUBS.

Congrats Todd.

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 10:43:20 PM
Name:  

Todd Calhoun

Best intermediate:  

13.370 -> 12.239

Comments:  

wow, i might start playing drunk more often, haha. 12.239 on a 3BV=32, 3BV/s=2.847.

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 08:44:24 PM
Name:  

Louis

Best intermediate:  

2,985 3bv/s ---> 3,008 NF

Comments:  

finnally over 3

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 02:24:57 PM
Name:  

Ian

Best beginner:  

3.62ish --> 4.34

Comments:  

Ooh... that was unexpected My first sup-4! 6.98 on a 26 board.

VCode 4USE: For use? Huh?

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Sep 26th 2006 at 01:55:17 PM
Name:  

Brandon Johnson

Best expert:  

70

Best intermediate:  

22

Best beginner:  

2

Comments:  

I have been sending my scores to Damien forever but can't get on the list! With screen shots and all. Help me out man!

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Sep 26th 2006 at 11:31:10 AM
Name:  

Rodrigo

Comments:  

@Elmar: I actually did mention the board shifts in the conclusion, as one of the unexplained problems by the theory in the article. Actually, I also suspect (like Ian said) that the shifts occur because of the numbers generated by the PRNG, i.e. the PRNG is the responsible for the shifts, because it gives numbers that are "arranged" in a way that shifts appear. But I still can not prove that, or even give enough evidence in support. If I find something nice, I'll write another article about this! And yes, the values that I presented are including all the 8 shifts.

@Ian: I can't wait to see what you have. Also, I remember I decided to study cycles exactly after reading this article that Damien wrote a long time ago. I suspected there would be not only 4 cycles, as Damien said. So I found 8. (Maybe other people knew this too, but I never saw it written anywhere at the time). I even recorded a video with Camtasia showing all 8 board shifts. It is available for download at the Yahoo group. I just don't remember the address of it right now!

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 09:34:18 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

I doubt Donner knows the answer to the board shift problems: they aren't an intentional bit of programming.

As for Damien's board cycle article, it can be found in the Wayback Machine at the site linked.

My calculation for the Expert board cycle is:
2^n * 9695727.6364

If anyone has a program which can speed through about this many F2s (my comp simply freezes), I'd be interested to see if it works.

If shifts exist, and if there are 8, then 2^n * 1211965.9546 is the estimate for the gap between shifts

To give an idea of the accuracy, the predicted value for Beginner was 24314.30 (real values 24304 and 24320) and for Intermediate, 12079.897 (real values 12064 and 12096).

Now I'll write up what I did

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Sep 26th 2006 at 09:02:58 AM
Name:  

Elmar

Comments:  

I think Robert Donner didnt reply to recent attempts to contact him.
@Damien: What happened to that article about the board shifts? I can't find it anywhere on your site?

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 07:32:49 AM
Name:  

Banzhaf

Comments:  

Why not simply ask Robert Donner?
or isn't he willing to snatch your fun of finding out the answers for yourself?

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 07:32:21 AM
Name:  

Rogen

Comments:  

@Dennis: Grats with your improvement! I'm also trying to get high exp nf 3BV/s, but my best is still 3.08 and 15-20 games with 3BV/s >3. I checks your stats and found only 3 exp games with 3BV/s > 3, how could this be possible?!!

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 06:30:12 AM
Name:  

Elmar

Comments:  

@Rod: Why don't you say a single word about the board shifts in your article? Do the numbers in your article include those shifts (considering that all numbers are multiples of 8)?
Maybe therein lies the key to why no cycles have been found for expert yet.
Also the nature of the shifts could give clues to how the board creation algorithm is designed.
Damien alread wrote a nice article on that, but it would be nice to know it what order the different shifts occur.

   
Sep 26th 2006 at 05:15:37 AM
Name:  

Dennis Lütken

Best expert:  

3.101 3bv/s ---> 3.375 3bv/s NF

Comments:  

I've been close to breaking this record by quite a bit several times over the course of the summer so I'm glad to finally do it. The world record for NF is 3.394 as far as I know, so I actually came pretty close! I finished a 222 3bv board in 66.778 seconds and I beleive there was only one guess (near the end of the game) so that was nice. My solving skills are definitely getting better, which is good since I can't click nearly as fast anymore. I was already Non-flagging king but I wanted to get closer to Martin's 3bv/s WR on expert and I finally did. This makes me feel a lot better about having the title as NF king! I have the video if anyone wants it and in case anybody is wondering... It was done on THE clone, OF COURSE!

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Sep 25th 2006 at 05:22:38 PM
Name:  

Kyle Barry

Best expert:  

95.49

Best intermediate:  

27.87

Best beginner:  

2.79

Comments:  

just learned the double click

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Sep 24th 2006 at 10:03:06 PM
Name:  

Dane

Best expert:  

75.37 ---> 74.866

Comments:  

on a 164 3bv board

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Sep 24th 2006 at 07:07:34 PM
Name:  

Tam Minh Bui

Comments:  

@Damien: Do you mind sending your beginner and intermediate 3bv/s records to my email? I am especially curious about beginner because it is my strongest mode :)

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Sep 24th 2006 at 04:36:35 PM
Name:  

Arjádre

Best expert:  

15.818=>15.019

Comments:  

Way to sub15.
Easy 3bv=32 board except for an ugly 50-50... In the end I had some bad hesitation moving across the board to an island for the last click . Btw good job on the article, Rodrigo... all this research is very interesting

   
Sep 24th 2006 at 01:45:12 PM
Name:  

Tam Minh Bui

Comments:  

http://www.thisisnotporn.com/

However, the first page is a defect because a message appears when you click the oven. It used to be that you just clicked the oven move on to the next page.

This is a puzzle, by the way, and not porn as the title indicates. For anyone who likes to think a lot, this is for you. Clue for the second page: view the source and manipulate it until it makes sense.

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Sep 24th 2006 at 12:51:06 PM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

lol, dw, it's not a search program I have a formula which has so far predicted board cycle values to about ±25 of the actual results. But the problem is that it has a multiplier of 2^n where n is some number that could be anything (for Beg it is 19 and for Int it is 20). Thanks for the lower bound though

And btw, if I break my expert record soon, it's because of the Int I've been doing, not because I cheated!

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Sep 24th 2006 at 11:43:26 AM
Name:  

Dmitriy

Comments:  

"Btw, I'm almost there with an estimate for the Expert board cycle length"

note that _shifts_ were not found for 6600000 boards in a row

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Sep 24th 2006 at 11:02:38 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

Heheh, maybe I'll write one eventually. I improved my program's calculation speed from exponential to polynomial, which makes it go from probably several centuries to < 1 second for 100 iterations

Regarding making a program to repeatedly press F2, in my programming language of choice (not giving too much away hopefully) it is possible in 3 lines and the program runs in about 10 seconds But making winmine illegal, although sensible, would really annoy me because I like my old computer with it's nice heavy mouse, but Clone doesn't run on it and even Arbiter can lag quite a lot when it feels like it. Meh.

Btw, I'm almost there with an estimate for the Expert board cycle length

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Sep 24th 2006 at 10:32:56 AM
Name:  

Rodrigo

Comments:  

Thanks for everything guys! It's cool to see that you liked it. And yes, Joni, I also felt all this enthusiasm when I did this research in 2004! Such a simple game, but behaving almost with its own life. Really exciting!

@Ian: I suggest you to write an article too. I'd really like to read your theory.

@Joni: actually, I didn't think about giving an example of 10 mines because of intermediate... I just chose 10 "randomly" But I see 9 would be a better example.

@Curtis: I know the way I used to capture the mines was not the most practical. I even said in the article: "Of course it could have been avoided, by modifying the board collecting process, in a number of ways.". "Modifying the board collecting process" could be for example, reading the positions of the mines directly from the memory. And concerning the +1 thing, it's just my personal preference. For example, int(RND*8 ) returns numbers from 0 to 7. Adding 1 returns from 1 to 8 - I just prefer like that. But it's allright without +1.

@Thomas: I agree with you on the cheat thing.

   
Sep 24th 2006 at 09:59:08 AM
Name:  

Thomas

Best intermediate:  

3bvs/s: 4,11 17*6-->17*7

Comments:  

I just got my first sub20 3bvs/s record, a 19,70 on a 77 3bv board. also posibly my first sup4
Additionally, I got another 17, I guess I really should get a 16 soon now

I think I improved on int by a lot in the last couple of days, and I think thats largely due to the fact that I trained using a new technique a lot:
I restricted 3bv to sub=40. And it really is amazing what is possible if you know youve got a great board, I got 2 14s, a ****load of 15s and an even bigger ****load of 16s already. I got a LSS 15 and a NF 16.
I guess this training style lets you get into the style you have to use when playing low3bv int boards.

Another thing, I almost broke my exp 3bvs/s record drunk verrrry early this morning. I drank 3 (small) glasses of Rum&coke, a small vodka pineapple and half a Litre of beer. I didnt have major pattern recognition problems but played incredibly smoothly, Im sure I would have broken some record had my parents let me play for more than 5 minutes And for letting me play, I agreed to wash the dishes this and tomorrow evening.

Nice work on the article rod! I learnt a lot about board cycles reading it, and I think that it will help a lot of people who didnt sweep yet when that topic was an issue. Great Job!

I agree with Curtis on all counts but one. Yes, anyone could find out about the cycles themselves and use them to cheat. But how many people would actually do that kind of research in order to cheat? Most probably less than those who are ready to write a script that creates 16000 F2s (which I guess is pretty easy). I think its a shame, but I guess the time to make winmine illegal might come soon. (especially as Vistamine probably will be).
gtg have dinner,
Thomas

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Sep 24th 2006 at 01:45:00 AM
Name:  

Christoph

Comments:  

@Curtis: I share your feelings

   
Sep 23rd 2006 at 05:35:41 PM
Name:  

Curtis

Comments:  

Oh, heh, I see you linked to that small 1-sec theory page I wrote in 2004. By the way, examining Minesweeper's internals confirms that the theory is correct.

Also, I found it funny you add 1 in the random number formula so 0 cannot be generated. You seem to like unnecessarily adding 1.

   
Sep 23rd 2006 at 05:11:01 PM
Name:  

Curtis

Comments:  

I am starting to feel like I am wasting my time here. When Rodrigo mentioned board generation, people seemed interested. When I say that I HAVE THE ALGORITHM to generate boards, nobody cares. (This isn't the first time, e.g., back when the clone had excessive bugs, I offered my time to help fix them - nobody cared.)

Anyway, it's clear you've done a lot of work on this Rodrigo; I just think I could've saved you time. Also you made some parts more cumbersome then you should have, e.g., you go to the trouble of taking a screenshot of every board to determine the mines. But of course the mine positions are stored in memory (even before a game starts). When you say the correction process was "long and boring", I hope you don't mean you corrected every board manually!!

Also I don't agree with your "ethics" section. According to you if I publish the formula that minesweeper uses to place mines, then I am immoral because anyone could generate the board sequences for any level. But more importantly, you make the assumption that someone who wanted to cheat would not be able to complete the same research on their own. By saying public exposition is not ethical, you are not making Minesweeper more secure. You are suppressing how easy it is to cheat to the honest players.

   
Sep 23rd 2006 at 02:16:49 PM
Name:  

joni

Comments:  

Rodrigo, I am impressed!!!

I had read very few things about it previously (I didn't understand what people ment by "board shifts" for example), and I want to praise you for writing in a way that is very easy to understand, even if you don't have a previous knowledge of the subject.

As I kept reading questions came to my mind, but they were all answered on the next sections of the article. Your theory looks very realistic :). It's a shame you can't test winmine with boards sized 32.

The article is mostly interesting from a programmer's point of view. You imagine being at the other side, writing the code for this program. It's just a simple game after all, you need a random number, you write standart textbook code. And then you see, that once you've written it, the program (this simple game) has started an existence of its own. No matter how hard you try to make IT obey precisely to your rules, it will still find the most improbable circumstances to establish it's own originality.

I got a bit carried away i think :P. Anyways, if I can suggest a small modification. After you illustrate your example with the 40nr PRNG 8x8 board with 5 mines, you state that cycles would appear also if we had 10 mines. I guess you chose the number 10 to replicate a regular beginner board, but your choice might seem a bit suspicious to someone, being that both 5 and 10 are submultiples of 40. I would suggest to changing the number 10 to sth else (9 for example), again we should have a cycle, maybe it'll take a bit longer but I think it would be a more clear way of illustrating that cycles don't depend on the mine number.

Again, very well done!

   
Sep 23rd 2006 at 01:56:31 PM
Name:  

Banzhaf

Comments:  

yes that works, thanks

   
Sep 23rd 2006 at 10:14:41 AM
Name:  

Ian

Comments:  

Not sure what OS you're on, but Media Player 10 (the one that comes with WinXP) has a play speed controller which you might be able to use with videos. It's in one of the menus... somewhere... I can't remember

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Sep 23rd 2006 at 09:15:20 AM
Name:  

Banzhaf

Comments:  

do you know a program being able to play the sub50elite avi vids slowly? I'd like to study especially Nyholm's records (the minesweeper technique school books), but I can't read them in that speed..^

   


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