2021 Minesweeper Gainz
Back to addiction after a 5 year hiatus
So I have been playing minesweeper way too much over the last 2 months. And I did indeed improve since the last time I have played this much. I played a lot during Summer ’16 (and a bit ’18 when I had a Windows computer for work). However, with a MacOS laptop now, I ended up using https://minesweeperonline.com/ to play all my games.
It’s a bit different compared to the official minesweeper applications that can only be downloaded for Windows (OG clones which have extra built in stats, replays, and stuff that can be used to verify times). But it is so easy to access, and so fun!
What’s new
Compared to before, the website now uses a bigger board (you cannot adjust size of board itself in Windows official versions, so it was clicking on tiny squares), so it is easy to click and control. A minor difference can be that you click on a ‘blank’ (zero) square each time you start by default compared to the official versions where it is any non-mine square (zero or not). So this might make things slightly easier since I do not have to keep randomly clicking around until I get a huge patch of nice.
Although it is mostly positive, the obvious drawback is that there is no way to make the results I get here ‘official’, nor are there any decimal places for solve times, as well as no official stats that I could get through the arbiter clone version.
Finally, I got a Logitech G502 gaming mouse, which I was able to nicely control the DPI and all. Back then I was playing on tiny mice bluetooth/usb that is not that ergonomic nor controllable. Much nicer using this mouse!
Improvements
Overall I was able to develop a slightly quicker playstyle thanks to some of the factors listed above. I also enjoy chilling to nice music, such as the new Olivia Rodrigo album (as well as other nice songs). So addicting and endless braindead playing.
I was able to improve my expert personal best to 83 seconds! Basically a 20 second improvement, and it felt so good finally beating it!
Obviously, there was a progression from around 100ish to 94 to 90 to 88 (which I got so close to breaking a lot). I know if I get lucky I can probably break sub 80 soon! I have gotten (close to solved) sub 90s multiple times since. Hopefully I will not grind as hard as beating the previous best of 88, since that annoyed me so much (since I got close to breaking it a lot).
I also beat my PB in intermediate by quite a bit, but I didn’t really keep track or cared too much since I enjoy expert mode the most (smaller modes is higher pressure since less margins of error to improve on).
Overall this is just a quick update on my minesweeper life! Made a podcast episode a few weeks ago about it check out the Zesty Zoy Pod! Aside from that, I just hope I can cut back a bit on this and focus on other summer goals!