Minesweeper

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

If you have ever (and I mean like ever) owned a personal computer, you have no doubt played the game Minesweeper at least once or twice.

But if you’re somehow unfamiliar with it or it has been so long since you fired up that Windows 3.1 PC, Minesweeper is a fairly simple game. You are presented with a grid of squares (usually 100, layed out in a 10-by-10 rectangle). The game starts when you click on one of the little squares. Once you do that, one of two things will happen: The square will be revealed to be empty or the square will be revealed to contain a “mine” — which in the game is depicted as a little black mine-shaped dot. If that happens, the game is over. But if it’s empty, some or all of the adjacent squares will also open up. Some of those squares will have a number inside them, typically a 1, 2, or 3,

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but possibly as high as 8. This number represents the number of mines thas sit directly next to that particular square.

The goal of the game is to identify and “flag” all of the mines without clicking on any of the squares that actually contain the mines. In the basic version of the game, there are 10 mines out of the 100 squares and you can use logic and deduction to figure out where all of the mines are to win the game.

Aging experts actually recommend the game (along with other “thinking” games like crossword puzzles, Sudoku and Mahjong) as a way of helping senior adults keep their minds sharp.

And if you’re just too dang smart for basic Minesweeper you can up the size of the puzzle and number of mines.

I’ve seen versions as large as 100-by-100 and 100 mines or more, which is admettedly a little much.

Now most folks probably haven’t played Minesweeper in a good minute. Even back in the day, Solitaire was the preferred time waster on the old family computer. But it turns out there are plenty who still do. In fact, you can play it on your phone. Just Google Minesweeper and there it is.

You don’t have to download and apps, you don’t have to register for anything, and best of all, there are no ads. As someone who plays a lot of phone games, I appreciate that to no end.

Why am I bringing up this 40year-old game? And yes, the first version of Minesweeper came out in 1983…

Well, a lot of folks are addicted to their phones. The term “chronically online” has entered into wide usage. I am a little guilty of that myself. I will sometimes be watching TV and suddenly realize I don’t know what’s happening in the show because I’ve been zoned out looking at funny videos of a cat who is raising a litter of chickens. But, if you just habitually have your phone out, instead of “doom scrolling,” why not just play a little Minesweeper? It passes the time while you’re in line at the bank just as well as social media, and you’ll only get mad at the little mines, not at the state of the world.