Minesweeper (video game)

Minesweeper is a logic puzzle video game genre generally played on personal computers.

[7] A later version, found present in Windows Vista's Minesweeper, offered a tileset with flowers replacing mines as a response.

[5][1] Another early version (predating even Windows 1.0) is the SunOS (Unix) game Mines, released in 1987 and written by Tom Anderson.

[8] The game is frequently bundled with operating systems and desktop environments, including Minesweeper for IBM's OS/2, Microsoft Windows, KDE, GNOME and Palm OS.

[10][1] Variants of Minesweeper have been made that expand on the basic concepts and add new game design elements.

Minesweeper X is a clone of the Microsoft version with improved randomization and more statistics,[6][1] and is popular with players of the game intending to reach a fast time.

[6] Crossmines is a more complex version of the game's base idea, adding linked mines and irregular blocks.

[1] Minesweeper Q was released in 2011 by the independent developer Spica[11] and is another clone of the Microsoft version available as a mobile and tablet app for iOS users.

Because this version is limited to use on mobile and iPad it is not ideal for players aiming to reach a fast time.

[13] The HP-48G graphing calculator includes a variant called "Minehunt", where the player has to move safely from one corner of the playfield to the other.

[15] A logic puzzle variant of minesweeper, suitable for playing on paper, starts with some squares already revealed.

These puzzles appeared under the name "tentaizu" (天体図), Japanese for a star map, in Southwest Airlines' magazine Spirit in 2008–2009.

[6] As of 2015, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the fastest time to complete all three difficulties of Minesweeper is 38.65 seconds by Kamil Murański in 2014.

[1] In 2000, Sadie Kaye[17] published a proof that it is NP-complete to determine whether a given grid of uncovered, correctly flagged, and unknown squares, the labels of the foremost also given, has an arrangement of mines for which it is possible within the rules of the game.