But later, when I became older, I thought a little more. I noticed that the boxes with a little 1 next to them only had one bomb, and those with 2 had two bombs, and so on. So I avoided the big numbers and stuck close to the little ones.
Then I realized that you could infer which boxes had bombs from the numbers all around them. So I can began to strategize, and I placed flags on those boxes that I knew had to have bombs. Then I was told that if you double-clicked on a number that had all the bombs next to it indicated by a flag, it would quickly clear all the other safe boxes.
So I got better and better at avoiding bombs.
I became faster and more successful and... dare I say it..? Elegant.
The cursor would fly from box to box, clicking, flagging, and clearing the safe boxes effortlessly--the mouse always half a second behind my eyes, one darting after the other. But no matter how good you get, you're always going to mis-click and get blown up. It's no big deal. You start over. Other times, you just have to guess. You come to two boxes with a one next to each with nothing else to help. Fifty-fifty chance.
It's more or less a simpler version of real life, except for the fact that the first box you click is never a mine. It might not help you much, or it might clear a huge area--leaving you with a lot to infer. But it is similar to real life in that you can get blown up over and over again.
I've blown up on my first try in real life. Minesweeper isn't like that. Minesweeper's fair. No matter where you click the first time, it'll never be a bomb. I've had every logical reason to suspect a bomb in real life, and I flag it as a bomb. But it's not. Also in real life, an empty space might say there's only one bomb next to it, when in reality it's completely surrounded.
People aren't good at indicating how likely it is that you'll blow up if you stick too close to them.
