Hacker News Reader

One thing that got my minesweeper game times down was to never actually mark the mines as such, just click the unturned squares you know aren't mines.

View on HN

From what I've observed top players flag mines very minimally, only so that they can strategically chord in certain situations. Lists of record scores typically make a distinction between flagging mines vs. not doing so. I never flag mines, but I'm also not that good compared to the best of the best.

For reference, the best of the best is Kamil Murański. There is only a 0.4 second difference between his NF (No Flag) time and his normal expert world record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrZCWx0fnfc (flagging)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bsLwGf-vUE (no flagging)

Wow, and I was proud of myself years ago when I achieved my goal of completing expert at less than 99 seconds!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com