Simon Tatham's Puzzles app has a minesweeper version that both A) generates on first click so you are guaranteed to never hit a mine on the first click and B) every board is 100% solvable with no need to guess. I have no idea what method it uses. I believe that _every_ puzzle in it is 100% solvable with no need to guess. It's also add free and completely local. It's a great app for anyone who likes puzzles on their phone.
I looked at the code for this once. It's sort of a hack. It generates a random puzzle, tries to solve it with a deterministic backtracking(IIRC) solver that detects situations where it's stuck. If it is stuck, it shifts some mines around in the place where the solver got stuck, according to some heuristics, and keeps solving. It keeps doing this until the entire puzzle has been solved, verifying that the puzzle can be solved without any guesswork.
I will second the recommendation. As someone who's wasted too many hours on minesweeper, it radically changes the game. Because I know there's a logical solution, I'm able to find patterns that I never found in the original, because I'd often assume it was just one of those guesswork situations. It's similar to how chess puzzles are easier than an equivalent position during a game. Because you know there's a neat solution, you're more willing to put in the legwork of searching for it. Learned a lot about the game simply by playing Simon's version.
Unfortunately it doesn't have proper controls and cell sizes (doesn't expand to the screen, so remain small), so it's easy to mistap on a wrong cell or mistap instead of mishold. Basically, controls aren't optimized for a touch screen
Nice article, I wanted to point out though that your example board at the beginning has no such ambiguities or 50/50's. Here's a recreation of it so you can see for yourself, if you open it up from the bottom left as you did, the 1 2 1 leads to the board being solved rather quickly:
Thank you for your interest in my previous post. This time, I've written a blog post about the game and the process of creating it.
In the original Minesweeper, there are inevitable 50/50 moments where you have to rely on luck. In the game I created, 'Explainable Minesweeper,' I eliminated these guessing situations. However, I also prevented the maps from becoming too easy! How? By using logical deduction, you can solve puzzles that initially appear to be luck-based. The blog post explains the process in more detail.
In minesweeper online there's also a "no guessing" mode which, in my opinion, is much more interesting than the normal mode. It means that if you guess in a situation where you could have deduced the mines, you always get a mine. Conversely, if you really are in a guessing situation, you will never get a mine. I'm pretty sure the game calculates the unknown part of the map after each click anew.
I thought no guessing mode means the map is generated in such way that guessing is not needed to solve the whole board? (To those who didn't know the mode, it also forces you a starting point)
As an experiment, I tried clicking on a random position after clicking the starting point. And it is possible to that the position is safe. So I don't think the map in no guessing mode is dynamic.
Also in the help section: "In this mode, a starting position is provided, and you never need to guess to complete the board."
If you’re interested in this you might like the game Bombe (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2262930/Bombe/) - a game about defining rules to let the computer solve various minesweeper (and more advanced variants) puzzles.
It’s a bit mind bending as you’re never actually solving the puzzles yourself, but creating sets of rules to solves whole classes of potential minesweeper patterns. It definitely solves that pleasurable puzzle solving itch!
Recently I have discovered Tametsi ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/709920 ), which is something like Minesweeper on steroids and some advanced levels can't be solved without advanced reasoning. If Minesweeper feels too easy/boring, this might be the right challenge for you.
Many many years ago I remember playing a free minesweeper that had, among other things, hexagonal maps as an option, but the big thing was that it guaranteed that you would never need to guess. You could always figure out the answer, and I believe there was a mode where if you clicked in a way where you couldn't have deduced the answer it would put a mine in there to punish you.
Anyone know what minesweeper software I'm thinking of?
Apart from the mine theme (and punishing you by putting in extra mines), that sounds like Hexcells. Very reminiscent of minesweeper, and you never have to guess.
The exclusion of patterns that involve more than 2 numbers is a pretty huge caveat that should be mentioned earlier and more clearly. When I was playing a lot of minesweeper, larger levels tended to require solving larger patterns most of the time. If you exclude those solutions, your estimate of how often you are required to guess is going to be pretty inaccurate.
For what it's worth, the way 14MV does hints is probably by just throwing the board into Z3 (https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3) or some other constraint solver. Microsoft has already done all the hard work for you.
I doubt it. A guaranteed-solveable minesweeper scenario isn't just about the global board setup, but about what information is available when, and what order the solution is gone through.
Bombe[0] is to my mind the definitive exploration of this concept. The tagline is "Minesweeper, but you only solve each situation once", which you do by writing these kinds of deduction rules with a fairly painful visual programming language. (You can't write an invalid rule: the game will detect the logic error and present you with a counter-example.)
You then let the computer churn through it's list of 100k scenarios idle-game style, until you bump into a board that can't be solved with the rules you provided, and you have to figure out what new rules to write.
As the game progresses, you'll unlock ways of parameterizing the rules in various ways, as well as various variant rules.
MostlyStable|7 months ago
mtlmtlmtlmtl|7 months ago
I will second the recommendation. As someone who's wasted too many hours on minesweeper, it radically changes the game. Because I know there's a logical solution, I'm able to find patterns that I never found in the original, because I'd often assume it was just one of those guesswork situations. It's similar to how chess puzzles are easier than an equivalent position during a game. Because you know there's a neat solution, you're more willing to put in the legwork of searching for it. Learned a lot about the game simply by playing Simon's version.
gavinsyancey|7 months ago
eviks|7 months ago
zabzonk|7 months ago
it's also available on windows and android - very good.
Unearned5161|7 months ago
https://agustinfitipaldi.com/minesweeper?seed=eyJ3aWR0aCI6OS...
greentec|7 months ago
greentec|7 months ago
Thank you for your interest in my previous post. This time, I've written a blog post about the game and the process of creating it.
In the original Minesweeper, there are inevitable 50/50 moments where you have to rely on luck. In the game I created, 'Explainable Minesweeper,' I eliminated these guessing situations. However, I also prevented the maps from becoming too easy! How? By using logical deduction, you can solve puzzles that initially appear to be luck-based. The blog post explains the process in more detail.
_9ptr|7 months ago
Bimos|7 months ago
As an experiment, I tried clicking on a random position after clicking the starting point. And it is possible to that the position is safe. So I don't think the map in no guessing mode is dynamic.
Also in the help section: "In this mode, a starting position is provided, and you never need to guess to complete the board."
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
tylervigen|7 months ago
elemeno|7 months ago
It’s a bit mind bending as you’re never actually solving the puzzles yourself, but creating sets of rules to solves whole classes of potential minesweeper patterns. It definitely solves that pleasurable puzzle solving itch!
yedpodtrzitko|7 months ago
nojs|7 months ago
red369|7 months ago
Could you explain how? I haven't played a huge amount of Minesweeper, but I can't see how that can be solved without risk/luck.
greentec|7 months ago
rtpg|7 months ago
Anyone know what minesweeper software I'm thinking of?
bigstrat2003|7 months ago
yifanl|7 months ago
joe_guy|7 months ago
Doxin|7 months ago
shkkmo|7 months ago
npinsker|7 months ago
jsnell|7 months ago
Bombe[0] is to my mind the definitive exploration of this concept. The tagline is "Minesweeper, but you only solve each situation once", which you do by writing these kinds of deduction rules with a fairly painful visual programming language. (You can't write an invalid rule: the game will detect the logic error and present you with a counter-example.)
You then let the computer churn through it's list of 100k scenarios idle-game style, until you bump into a board that can't be solved with the rules you provided, and you have to figure out what new rules to write.
As the game progresses, you'll unlock ways of parameterizing the rules in various ways, as well as various variant rules.
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2262930/Bombe/
joshka|7 months ago