People have posted comments in my Minesweeper King entry. My times have improved since then…

Expert: 130
Intermediate: 39
Beginner: 4

I’m still not Minesweeper King, but I’m better than everyone I know personally. Check out some crazy videos at http://metanoodle.com/minesweeper/. I’m not entirely convinced these are not all faked. Check out the 66 second one under Expert. Got a stopwatch? See for yourself that the seconds shown on the video don’t match with your stopwatch. At least on my computer, they don’t.

It’s got me thinking. One of my friends suggested that it would really be more likely to be real if they recorded themselves along with the computer. I’m gong to do that sometime this summer.

I’m also going to figure out how to fake one of those videos. The main gist of the idea is capturing with a slow framerate, then playing it back using a faster framerate. Then, make a movie of the timer and superimpose it. Then, edit out some extraneous movements.

Screenshots are way too easy to fake.

And when I hear people who say the first time they finished expert, they got 120 or something, I begin to wonder. Did they just get really good before doing expert? Or did they just have bad luck until finally finishing it? Or, *gasp*, could they be lying?

I bet there are people who are good, with really good times, not lying about it. But you have to have played for a long time. Think about it. To get a 1 second in beginner, you have to play a lot of times, meaning a long time, so that eventually you get a good board that arises through chance. The same applies to intermediate and expert. It also takes a long time before you can click efficiently and recognize and act on patterns.

I’ve noticed Minesweeper times aren’t exactly correct. Remember that whole, when does the new millenium start fiasco? Right when you click, it starts at one second! Your times are offset by that much. Don’t worry, I’ll still post as is shown on the high score list.

Oh yeah, and I won’t forget to work on my best times. Good job with your times, those who left comments.