Minesweeper

I just reached 85% in Beginner Minesweeper this week. It would have happened a long time ago, but I first started playing this game during a road trip and accidentally kept clicking on mines every time we hit a bump in the road, so my win percentage started off really low (that was the time the 5 count losing streak happened).

I have my best results when I limit myself to one game a day. It's so tempting to play again and again and make the score go up just a little higher, but eventually, you'll lose. Of course you'll then want to play several more games to recover and end the day at your highest point. The longer you play, the more frequently you'll lose. At some point, I realized I virtually never lost the first game I played. I have lost exactly one game since then. That was the day when I decided to break my one-game-a-day rule, and sure enough, I lost my second game. There's another benefit to playing just one game a day; you don't look up and wonder where your afternoon went. Rather than being a waste of time, it's a quick mind exercise and even a discipline.

I don't flag mines at the Beginner level. The game board is so small, the mines are very easy to count on those rare occasions when I need to know how many I've found. I don't even scroll over mines with my cursor; that's when accidents happen.

I don't care how fast I complete the game. I would if Minesweeper would keep track of my average time, but it doesn't. My best time is 11 seconds. I don't want that record to drop any lower because that would reflect my exceptional luck, not my mad skills!