Lazyman Minefield is for the person who is too busy, or perhaps too lazy, to play the Minefield game, yet they like the game and wish to play it. The game is equally good for Lazywomen as well.
The Minefield game is also called Minesweeper or MineHunt, or many other names, but is easily recognizable as one of the games provided in Microsoft Windows (and also in Palm PDAs).
Lazyman Minefield was created because I like the Minefield game but got bored with all the simple and obvious moves that were taking up too much of my all too valuable time. If you limit your actions to the Restart button and mouse clicks (left to clear, right to toggle among marked, question-marked, and unmarked) it works just like all the other Minefield games you may have played. You can set the playing field size to gargantuan proportions and can select three difficulty levels. However Lazyman Minefield offers so much more!
Play online (requires a Java plugin) here. Note that only certain browsers still allow running Java applets, and that ability will be going away by the end of 2016. But that was 11 years of online playability!
Download Java executable (JAR file) here (49k).
You might want to read about all the great features, listed below.
This button will cause locations that must be bombs to be marked with a flag. This happens when an adjoining clear square has a count that can only be satisfied if the location contains a bomb.
| Prior to pressing Mark Button | |
| After pressing Mark Button. Obvious, isn't it? Yet only Lazyman Minefield does it! | |
All Minefield games will clear the locations surrounding those with zero neighboring bombs. This button will clear locations which obviously must not be bombs because they have an adjoining clear square with a count equal to its flagged neighbors.
| Prior to pressing Clear Button, all locations marked with an X have an adjoining clear square with a count equal to the number of flagged neighbors. |  |
| After pressing the Clear Button even more locations are cleared than those with X because the algorithm iterates until no more locations can be cleared |  |
All Minefield players quickly realize the conditions that are automatically handled by the Clear and Mark buttons. The Deduce button marks and clears locations that can only be determined by deduction. Nine different rule templates are applied in all orientations at all locations. Use this button if Mark and Clear don't discover anything and you are too lazy to find anything else yourself. Since the Deduce algorithm doesn't guess and doesn't cheat, it occasionally will get stuck when either the deduction is too complicated or there is no move that can be made with 100% certainty.
| Neither the Mark nor Clear buttons will advance the game at this point. |  |
| So the Deduce button is pressed. The location left of the X is adjacent to two bombs, which can be at three locations, however one of the locations must be at the upper left so it is flagged. The location left of Y is adjacent to two bombs, but it can't be at the location to it's left because the second bomb then could not either be at the upper left or lower left, so the location is cleared. A following Mark command will flag the locations at the upper and lower left. |  |
Tired of pressing the Mark, Clear, and Deduce buttons? This mother-of-all-buttons presses the other buttons for you. It pauses a half second after each productive button press so you can see the game progress. It stops when none of the buttons progress the game and you will have to do some thinking on your own. However, see the Oops mode, below, if you are just too lazy to think.
The very start of the game can be so frustrating as one throws darts at the playing field hoping to find an open space to begin play while not hitting a bomb. If Quick Start mode is selected, then when the game is reset such an area will be uncovered for you. This saves a lot of time.
| Start of game in Quick Start Mode |  |
| Too lazy to play, so the Lazy Button is pressed. The game plays to completion before one's eyes in a few seconds. You win! |  |
Available only in the downloaded version, this is the ultimate for the lazy player. Also works well for cheaters who want it to look like they are smart. When Oops mode is selected, the left mouse button will clear a location if there is no bomb there, otherwise it will mark it (as if you had wisely pressed the right mouse button!). If you play using the Lazy Button, this mode will allow you to safely continue when the play gets stuck.
| One of the two remaining unknown locations is a bomb. But which is it? You have a 50/50 chance of guessing correctly. |  |
| With the Lazyman Minefield Oops mode you'll guess right every time! |  |
|
Tom Almy webmaster9@almy.us |
Last Modified July 2018. |
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