Minesweeper scores?

[Elok]

Ah, minesweeper: probably the best program Microsoft ever made. I've killed SO many hours just sitting there clicking and staring until I felt like my eyeballs were about to spontaneously extrude. The best I've managed to do, on my current computer at least, is:
12 seconds beginner
76 seconds intermediate
246 seconds expert
How well have you guys done? I know somebody here has to have beaten the 246; until recently I couldn't beat expert at all. Obviously this isn't really anything to brag about, but I'm just asking out of curiosity...

[MichaeltheGreat]

My best four on expert: 54 seconds, 57 seconds, 62 seconds and 64 seconds.

I've heard about a cheat, but never been able to remember what it supposedly is, or find anything that works as a cheat. Obviosly luck is a big factor, but there were a few things I did:

I had a 21" monitor, 6 x 8 pen tablet and trackball for my standard comp setup - the only thing I did was change resolution to 800 x 600.

Next thing, make sure the damned question mark option is off, and I used the pen tablet hand to select, the right click on the trackball hand to identify.

Then I got lucky breaks that didn't leave me with any ambiguous areas.

[BustaMike]

I posted a thread about this not too long ago. Currently my best is 160 on expert, but several people here have said they've broken 100. MtG even claims to have had scores in the 50's on expert. There is NO WAY I will get a time in the 50's on expert, ever.

[MichaeltheGreat]

If you have a normal mouse/trackball set up, you can barely break 100 with luck. The way I did it was two handed - not cheating, but a definite mechanical advantage when you have a lot of squares to clear.

[MattH]

Oh, god.

[vovan]

I did 1 second on Beginner. Once. With fast clicking. And a LOT of luck. No cheating or anything. Other than that, my normal score would be about 10-15 on beginner, 60 on intermediate, and 180 on expert.

[geeslaka]

20x20 board, 50 mines, 130 seconds.
Just started playing again.
It's been too long.

[Urban Ranger]

I got like a 92 second record on expert level a long time ago, but I have stopped playing Minesweeper for years.

BTW, trackball is better, though you need to get used to it.

[BustaMike]

The cheat was with old versions of windows you could simply edit the text file that keeps the scores. Kinda defeats the purpose of playing though.

[DrSpike]

I used to play this incessantly. My expert time was 61, which is pretty much unbeatable unless you have spent hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours playing. The world record was 48. So my hat off to MtG if he is serious about his time in the 50's............we used to keep a worldwide list and the number that broke 60 seconds was small, only a couple of hundred.

[DrSpike]

Oh, if you used 2 devices then the time would have been inadmissable.

[Eli]

Beginner - 3 (pure luck)
Intermediate - 39
Expert - 136

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DrSpike
we used to keep a worldwide list and the number that broke 60 seconds was small, only a couple of hundred.

On expert level though luck is always an issue, so keeping a record wouldn't mean anything.

[DrSpike]

Sure you can't go sub-sixty without a good grid. But the skill in speed minesweeper lies in not making any mistakes in the fastest time possible when the chance is there.

Ultimately the nature of the game is that there may be a 50/50 at the end. If you get it right you could call that luck I guess, but it evens out. There is no way you can say players that beat 60 seconds (something which always eluded me - actually I have checked the old lists now and below 60 was nothing like 200, more like 50 tops worldwide, and this was at a time when minesweeper was more popular) are lucky. They are the best players, period.

[FrustratedPoet]

Isn't Minesweeper the ultimate Sunday gamers' game Spike?