I play a lot of Minesweeper at work. (I never play minesweeper at home because Macs do not come equipped with the game; you have to go out there and hunt it down and download it and even then it's a curious imitation of the game, an attempt by someone to improve the game for us finicky Mac users.) I suspect that it is the only game that really captivates my attention for long periods of time because I find it incredibly hard to win. My mind is not great with numbers, and it's very hard for me to compute the logics and reasonings of what goes where when there is no obvious move. (I imagine that I would similarly inclined to while away the hours playing tetris, but there is no tetris on my computer here at work, and that has always seemed more fun as a handheld game anyway.)
More than that, though, sometimes I find myself making the wrong choice even though I know it is the wrong choice. I've played enough times that I can recognize certain patterns of mines and numbers, and yet sometimes I ignore those patterns altogether. It is as if I am pretending that just this once, the mine might not be where it so obviously should be. Of course, I am almost 100% wrong in this supposition, because this is a computer, and the little computer within that runs minesweeper isn't tricksy enough to keep things that random. Oh, sure, every once in a while (a great while), something exciting like a 7 pops up; those are rare enough to provoke genuine astonishment. But that is seemingly so random as to not even factor into those run-of-the-mill everyday games that I have with myself on an increasingly frequent basis.
So mostly I grapple with 3's and 5's and 6's, and seem to most often go wrong on those 5's, because I sometimes forget what five mines attached to one box looks like. Also, I like to pretend that I can go faster than I can, and I end up making stupid, stupid mistakes in one or two out of every ten or so games: a botched 1, or a 2 that's touching three mines. Sometimes I go so fast that my finger hits the wrong mouse button (I am a firm two button minesweeper player; I use both buttons pressed at the same time to open up squares around a mine, something that not too many people I know do.), or hits the two buttons together impotently, when there is nothing left to clear away. But mostly, I just plug away, for 20-25 minutes, after which I turn my attention to other things: web browsing or reading, most likely.
I keep coming back to minesweeper, even though I really don't think I can beat the last speed record I set, and even though it is essentially the same game, over and over and over again. Strange, isn't it?
I think you should share your best time. I'm uber curious.
Posted by: Katie | October 24, 2006 at 04:42 PM