This is a continuation of a previous post.
Finding a Mine: The No-Brainer
The No-Brainer mine locations are the ones that require absolutely no thinking to deduce. I had a few of these from the outset. You know you have No-Brainer mines when the number on the square you are considering is the same as the number of unrevealed squares surrounding it. Example:
No-Brainers
I put a red circle and a green box around all the No-Brainer minetypes at this point in the game. I will talk about two of them, labeled A and B in the picture above.
For A, the number in the revealed square (within the red circle) is a 1. This means that there is 1 mine in the surrounding 8 squares (located within the green box). However, 7 of the 8 squares are already revealed and do not contain a mine. This means that the last remaining unrevealed square within the green box must be the mine we are looking for. Thus, we will mark it with a flag.
For B, the number in the revealed square is a 2. This means that there are 2 mines in the surrounding 8 squares. However, there are only 2 unrevealed squares where the mines could be. Thus, these squares must be harboring mines. There has to be 2 mines in the area, and these two squares are the only possible locations for them, so they must be the mines that are indicated by the revealed square 2. Mark them with flags:
Mark the No-Brainers with a Flag
Counter-Example - This is not a No-Brainer:
This is not a No-Brainer
The number in the red circle indicates there is 1 mine in the surrounding squares, but there are 2 squares still unrevealed. That mine could be in either of the two unrevealed squares. Thus, we cannot be sure where that mine is located. Remember the first tip: Do Not Guess. Let’s see what else we can do with the board first. Guessing is always a last resort and we haven’t tried anything else yet. So, leave this alone for now.
Thanks for reading. More to come.
~The Witch Doctor
Tags: game, microsoft, mine, minesweeper, sweeper, win, windows
