Re: Minesweeper solver

Article: 7916 of alt.hackers
From: hymowitz@zeus.towson.edu (Hymie!)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: Minesweeper solver
Date: 31 May 1995 01:09:36 GMT
Organization: Zero Education for Undergraduate Students
Lines: 57
Approved: hymowitz@zeus.towson.edu
Distribution: world
Message-ID: 3qgfkg$eg9@news.umbc.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: zeus.towson.edu
Status: RO

and lo, there was much rejoicing among the people, as
  edp@mv.com writes:
>Sam Wood (sjw@saucer.cc.umr.edu) wrote, in some article that expired:
>
>[Assertion that Minesweeper guarantees the first chosen square is safe.]
>
>>not true. It's tru that it would be simple to implement, but it just
>>isn't the case. I have on many occasions hit a mine on the first
square.
>>try the corners. i have never seen a case where no corner had a mine.
>
>I tried the corners.  Did you?  I set Minesweeper (from Windows 3.1) to
>24x30, with 667 mines (the maximum it will accept).  In 20 successive
>games, I tried each of the corners five times as the first square.  No
>bomb ever appeared in the first chosen square.  If the bombs are placed

has it occurred to anybody that different versions of the game follow
different standards?

yes - microsoft windows's ''standard'' minesweeper will never give you
a bomb on the first pick.  i had two minesweeper games on macintoshes -
one would also never give you a bomb on the first pick; the other would.
i have three minesweep games for linux.  one will give you a bomb on the
first pick.  one wouldn't (but i'm not sure - my new ncurses broke it) and
i haven't played the third one enough to know for sure.

damn... now i need an

obhack:  in my old apartment, i had wired speakers from the stereo to every
room in the apartment, except one.  the bathroom was, literally, two inches
too far to get the wire through a hole in the door and still allow the
door to close.  i had also used my last extension cord, but i have
(somewhere - i had them handy then) an assortment of adapter plugs -
3/6"-rca, 1/4"-3/16", etc.  the right combination was just
over three inches
long, and my bathroom had music.

no?  ummm.......

ob-scary-for-the-people-involved-hack: i used to work in a hospital/nursing
home.  the elevators could hold three wheelchairs, but you generally needed
one person to move the chairs and one to hold the elevator door open. i
often had to get two (or three) patients at a time back to their apartments by
myself.  solution:  took off a sneaker, put it in the path of the elevator
door.  wait for the door to close, it would hit the sneaker and bounce
open.  put one wheelchair in the elevator, and strongly reassure that person
that i had to be trusted.  door closes and bounces open, get the second
patient in, same for the third.  the more lucid people were quite
impressed... until i lost a sneaker.

--hymie                                                hymowitz@zeus.towson.edu
GCS  d+(--)@  H-  s:--  g+?  p4+  au-  a-  w++  v+  c++(+++)  U++  L++  N+++
W  M+  V  -po+  t+  5  j  tv+  b+  e+  u+  h-  f+(-)  r++  n-(--)  y+
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