Elmar Technique

Elmar Technique is the method of using one mouse button to make two clicks.

The History of ET

Elmar Zimmermann was trying to break his NF records, so he configured his left mouse button to make it click when you pressed or released it. On 29 August 2005 he announced his new expert record of 49.62, followed a few minutes later by a new intermediate record of 11.28. His previous records had respectively been 57 and 14 seconds.

A day later, Roman Gammel posted in the Guestbook to say he did not like the abnormally high click/s in these videos. Elmar explained how he had used Logitech Mouseware, and he pointed out that he had mentioned the technique publicly. James Custer claimed that anything helping you click faster was cheating, but Elmar replied that a distinct physical movement was still needed for each click. Damien Moore noted that double-clicking was accepted for Solitaire rankings. Sergey Pastukhov then asked if records would be accepted using keyboard commands.

The following day, Elmar made a legitimate 50.96 on expert. He tried to convince the community that thinking, not clicking, should be the limiting speed factor in minesweeper. Although some sweepers agreed with Elmar, a majority of posts rejected his idea.

ET directly led to creation of the IMC, as Roman Gammel posted on 4th September to suggest election of a group of players to resolve this problem.