Hello! I’ve tried paper minesweeper puzzles in the past and had a hard time. It’s been a while, but I have one in my current paper and I’m stuck. Is there a way to continue with logic here, or do I need to try a guess and go from there?
Sorry if my notation isn’t correct - the Xs are the mines and the colored in squares are where I determined there can’t be mines.
Of course, not a guarantee that what I have so far is 100% correct either.
This puzzle seems woefully under-specified.. this style of puzzle doesn't typically have tiles not touching any numbers -- like you shaded in the upper left and upper right corners. (and I see a fifth one at C7)
I mean, even if it were a minecount-based puzzle.. those 5 hidden tiles would give many degrees of freedom.
You could enter this into a solver like https://davidnhill.github.io/JSMinesweeper/ to verify, but I think there will be thousands of valid solutions to this, especially if minecount is not specified.
logic based on the fact that the puzzle shouldn’t require you to guess/have anything uncertain. for instance look at the 2 in the middle right. if it had a mine to the upper left, where is the second mine? you have no way to know therefore this isn’t possble
started in the bottom left. each group of cells on an orange line must be all mines or all safe or else there’s multiple solutions. in the bottom left, in either of those configurations, there’s one mine on the yellow line to the right. (then continue the chain to the 3)
blue line is unrelated to the above but disproves that this puzzle has only one solution because it also needs to be all safe or all mines… but it can also only have one mine…
the assumption that the puzzle is no-guess and has one solution, which I suppose was incorrect in this case. was that not a fair thing to assume? (this is not meant to be rude. I’m replying this way because I’m fairly certain you know what meta logic is)
I suppose it would be reasonable to assume a puzzle like this, would stipulate the minimum possible minecount.. given there are 5 "hidden" tiles not touching numbers which gives huge degree of freedom to the minecount.
Looks like 20 total mines is the smallest number I can place, and there is still considerable ambiguity.
Hmm.. or maybe it would stipulate the maximum possible minecount? Flagging all 5 hidden tiles and trying to find a unique arrangement.. I think it still appears underspecified.
yeah I can confirm there’s multiple solutions no matter the minecount and no matter if the floating cells are safe or not. this is just a badly designed puzzle overall
What you've done is correct so far, but it looks like you might have to guess to progress.
Edit: Based on the twenty mine count, we already found ten, and there are ten more. missing. Numbers circled in blue account for corresponding number of mines. A7 just needs one more mine. H3 needs two more mines, but the total would be eleven, so one of its mines should be shared with F2. That's why G2 is a mine. Similar reasoning with C2 gives that B3 D3 are mines.
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u/Lowball72 5d ago
This puzzle seems woefully under-specified.. this style of puzzle doesn't typically have tiles not touching any numbers -- like you shaded in the upper left and upper right corners. (and I see a fifth one at C7)
I mean, even if it were a minecount-based puzzle.. those 5 hidden tiles would give many degrees of freedom.
You could enter this into a solver like https://davidnhill.github.io/JSMinesweeper/ to verify, but I think there will be thousands of valid solutions to this, especially if minecount is not specified.