Is this minesweeper board inconsistent?
In the above game, look at the cell circled in red. It says 1, which means it must have only one neighboring cell which will have a mine. However, there are two cells which have mines surrounding this cell, circled in blue.
How is this possible? Is this board inconsistent, or have I misunderstood the rules of the game?
Best Answer
The board is consistent, but your logic is flawed: you've added a flag to a non-mine space. That's what this crossed out mine means:
Incidentally, the mine with a red background is the one you triggered. Other mines that are displayed at the end of the game are ones that you haven't flagged yet. The remaining flags were correct - they mark the space of a mine.
I assume the board area looked similar to this before you clicked (you'll have to excuse the quick MS paint mock-up):
Yellow arrows represent 'solved' mines. Purple diamonds represent safe squares (the '2' above them already has two mines associated with it) so that just leaves the question marks as the 'unknowns'.
Note the '2' in (R6,C7) already has one solved mine (which you correctly flagged) next to it at (R6,C6). This means that the clicked mine (red background) and the mis-flag (crossed mine) could not both be mines:
From the position of the '2' and '1', both of those squares had an equal chance of containing a single mine, thus they weren't logically solvable before the detonation.
However, the '3's in Column 9 (Row 6 and 7) would have confirmed that the square you clicked (R7,C8) had to be a mine; there's only 3 unchecked positions surrounding them, two of which you've flagged already, therefore leaving the detonated mine as the final position:
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Can you avoid guessing in Minesweeper?
Instead of guessing, you can solve it by flagging the rest of the board and seeing how many mines are left. You can solve 'Example D' if there is 1 mine or 3 mines, but you must guess if there are 2 mines left. If you decide to save time and guess immediately, think about the mine density of the level you are playing.Can you fail Minesweeper first click?
No, it is (normally) not possible to hit a mine on the first click in Microsoft's implementation of Minesweeper. It is pretty easy to convince yourself that it is impossible to lose on the first click.Is Minesweeper just guessing?
Some variants of Minesweeper ensure that the board can be solved without the need to guess. To win the game, players must open all non-mine cells while not opening any mines. Flagging all the mined cells is not required. The "score" of the game is the time taken to complete it.Is there a pattern in Minesweeper?
Minesweeper PatternsThe two most famous patterns are 1-2-1 and 1-2-2-1. You should memorise these immediately. The 1-2-1 pattern has one solution. The 1-2-2-1 pattern has one solution.Minesweeper oddities and their probabilities: 8, 77, 8-8; no 0,1,2 boards; 1-click boards.
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