Cell (1,1) contains two-thirds of a mine
July 22, 2010 2:24 AM   Subscribe

Quantum Minesweeper. Is regular minesweeper not enough for you? Now you can play on a quantum superposition of multiple boards. Watch the video tutorial or check out the example games. posted by alby (20 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
I watched the tutorial and thought "wow, this looks complicated." Apparently, so did my computer, because clicking on the link crashed my machine. There's probably a joke in here somewhere about my computer both functioning and not functioning at the same time, but I lack the necessary humor skills.

I'm using Win XP, IE 8,0 in case anyone else has similar issues.
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 2:54 AM on July 22, 2010 [1 favorite]


My brain hurts.
posted by valkyryn at 3:18 AM on July 22, 2010


I thought it was pretty cool, but I was hoping expert level would escalate to a four board superposition.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:12 AM on July 22, 2010


This is great. And evil. Evil that might only be surpassed if they move onto Quantum SkiFree with superposed yetis . . .
posted by protorp at 4:14 AM on July 22, 2010


The 5d rubik's is the one that makes my brain hurt.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:19 AM on July 22, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is great. When the boss leaves my cube I immediate enter a state of both slacking and working. These waveforms collapse only once he pokes his head back in and sees me awkwardly alt-tab into Outlook.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 6:29 AM on July 22, 2010 [8 favorites]


So this is the kind Obama plays in between chess matches, right?
posted by shakespeherian at 6:50 AM on July 22, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is nothing new. Minesweeper has always been in a superposition between leisure and tedium.
posted by TwelveTwo at 7:33 AM on July 22, 2010


Kinda like n-Dimensional Minesweeper, created by MeFi's own Xezlec.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 7:40 AM on July 22, 2010 [2 favorites]


damn, and I had things to do today...
posted by selenized at 7:55 AM on July 22, 2010


In high school I had a friend I used to play 5-dimensional mental Tic-tac-Toe with on road trips. But I think this beats that.
posted by scalefree at 7:56 AM on July 22, 2010


Something I don't understand about the game: how can you distinguish between configurations that contain a quantum half-mine in one board versus the other one? For instance, I just played a game through to what I thought was the end, but the game didn't recognize my solution as correct until I switched one of the half-mines from one board to the other. Seems like no measurement I could have made would show the difference between those two, but it's possible I'm missing something.
posted by albrecht at 9:02 AM on July 22, 2010


In the tutorial, he makes a guess as to which of the two super-posed boards contains the mine, and which does not. I tried to see what happens in game when you do something similar, and I don't understand what happens--the two boards seem to become one board spontaneously.... Is this some kind of wave function collapse joke, or is the game just too buggy to play?!?!
posted by Chuckles at 10:59 AM on July 22, 2010


So I just played another game. The lower left corner initially indicated 1.5 adjacent mines, but as I proceeded this number changed to 2, and the two solutions boards merged into one.
posted by Chuckles at 11:04 AM on July 22, 2010


Playing with "Show Solution" turned on, when I make a classical measurement on half a mine, I never blow myself up. Why is Schrödinger's cat always alive?
posted by drdanger at 11:29 AM on July 22, 2010


It is a wave function collapse joke after all!

Joke because of the.. controversial nature of the idea of wave function collapse.

I'm still quite confused. Every time I've clicked an entangled mine, I get a collapse that goes in my favour.
posted by Chuckles at 11:31 AM on July 22, 2010


I can't wait for the quantum lottery.
posted by wayland at 2:18 PM on July 22, 2010


In figuring out this game, it occurs to me that there's a potential Minesweeper variant that allows more than one mine on each square. Does anyone know anywhere I can find a version of Minesweeper like that online?
posted by logopetria at 2:32 PM on July 22, 2010


Every time I've clicked an entangled mine, I get a collapse that goes in my favour.

You seem to have discovered Quantum immortality.
posted by JohnnyB at 7:35 PM on July 22, 2010


logopetria:

There's a "minesweeper RPG" in which each mine is a monster of level 1-10. The numbers of clear squares is the total level of surrounding monsters. You can only defuse/defeat monsters your level or lower, and you have HP that decreases whenever you attack/fail-to-defuse a monster higher than your level (by an amount equal to their level). Not EXACTLY what you want, but in the vein.

Mamono sweeper
posted by nickgb at 10:56 AM on August 18, 2010


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