Random question

[nancylebov]

It's my impression that optimizing Minesweeper play for speed and/or fewest clicks would be a Hard Problem.

What do you think?

Cutting back on playing Minesweeper enough to work on the program might be another Hard Problem.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

How would you count losing games into the calculation? I think there's a tradeoff between fewest clicks if you win and probability of winning.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've vaguely mulled different tournament structures for minesweepers. You'd certainly get different results for best score out of a set of games with or without penalties for lost games, best score in a single game, or best average score out of a set.

So optimizing would depend on the exact winning conditions, but I don't think there's any game-like winning condition which would make it an easy problem.

[sethg]

Yes. Minesweeper is NP-complete.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

That's for playing. Is optimizing a harder problem?