Archived Minesweeper Websites

Minesweeper Strategy (1996)

http://mcn.net/~jimloy/mine.html

Simple one page introduction to solving Minesweeper.

Minesweeper For Beginners (1996)

http://www.ishipress.com/mineswee.htm

Introduction to Minesweeper and lengthy advice from a player with scores of 11-83-276. Sloan claimed to be the best player in the world and explained that Expert scores under 400 seconds were amazing. Analysis of several Minesweeper boards using text diagrams.

Jack Welsby's Minesweeper Page (1996-2000)

http://www.innotts.co.uk/~jackw/mineswpr.htm

Minesweeper page with some of the earliest mentions of NF, Density and Cheats.

Minesweeper Tips (1997-1999)

http://www.cs.siena.edu/bchu/minesweeper/

Some Minesweeper tips and personal scores. The Guestbook was the center of the Minesweeper community for several years and is an important part of sweeping history. Created by Brian Chu on 3 Jul 1997 and updated until 3 May 1999.

Hall of the Minesweeper (1997-1999)

http://www.interlog.com/~thermhlp/winmine/

Fan site with an introduction to Minesweeper and a short strategy guide. Created by Alex Perel in July 1997 but never updated although the Guestbook stayed alive intil August 1999.

The Minesweeper Page (1997-2000)

http://www.ph-cip.uni-koeln.de/~wester/winmine.html

The best minesweeper strategy site for many years with numerous examples and tips. Created by Frank Wester on 12 Aug 1997 and updated until 29 Aug 2000.

Minesweeper Strategies and Tactics (1999)

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~jl/Essays/minesweeper.html

List of Minesweeper tips compiled by John LeFlohic on 14 February 1999.

The Intermediate Hall of Fame (2001-2002)

http://www.minesweeper.8k.com
http://www.geocities.com/inthalloffame
http://iinthalloffame.8m.com
http://pub3.bravenet.com/guestbook/show.php?usernum=238466592

Website dedicated to the Intermediate level of Minesweeper with rankings, player profiles, articles and mouse reviews. Created by Matt McGinley on 24 Mar 2001 and updated until 28 Nov 2002. At the time, McGinley was the top ranked Intermediate player with 10 seconds. The site had a Top 20 ranking, a Hall of Fame ranking for players with Sub20 scores and a list of all 72 known players with Sub20 scores.

Minesweepers.org (2003-2016)

http://minesweepers.org

The site started in March 2003 as a strategy guide called "The Minesweeper Handbook". In January 2004 it introduced world rankings (one ranking per level) using a downloadable Winmine clone with players paying a membership fee to upload scores. The original clone did not have flags but these were added in a later release. A new version of the site was published in May 2007 which added state rankings for American players and a world ranking based the sum of best Beginner, Intermediate and Expert scores. The site was maintained by "Eric" until 20 May 2016.

Programmer's Minesweeper (1995-2003)

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ramsdell/pgms/

One of the earliest published Minesweeper solvers with detailed information on implementing your own strategy. The program originally implemented Single Point Strategy and Equation Strategy but was updated in 2003 to include Mio Strategy based on a paper by Castillo & Wrobel. Numerous other math papers have used PGMS to implement and test custom strategies.

Dynamite Minesweeper (1995-1996)

http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~manning/dynamine.html
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~manning/dynamine.html

Free Windows 3.1 game where you find a path across a field using your mine detector. Instead of numbers the shade of colour changes.

Sledgehammer (1998-2001)

http://www.sledgehammer.demon.co.uk/solver.htm

Solver written by Tim Williams in 1998. Website was created on 1 April 1998.

Hex Minesweeper (1998)

http://users.aol.com/hausebill/hexmines.html

One of the earliest known hexagonal versions of Minesweeper for Windows. Shareware download.

Global Mines (1998-2002)

http://algonet.se/~stefpet/software/globalmines/
http://www.stefan-pettersson.nu/site/gmines/

Pettersson created Global Mines in 1998 but rewrote the program in 2002 after seeing Project Minesweeper Utopia. Global Mines almost became an official version for world rankings but in the end Minesweeper Clone and Minesweeper X were chosen because Global Mines cost $9.90 per player.

OPENsweeper (1998)

http://home.dti.net/open/omswp.html

OPENsweeper was a version for Windows that penalised you for guessing. Site mentions a lost 150 page manuscript on Minesweeper. Created by Jean-Claude Chetrit on 25 Sep 1998.

Smrtmine (1999)

http://fy.chalmers.se/~f96hajo/old/play_games.html

Solver that can play the entire game or one move at a time.

The Oz Minesweeper (2001)

http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~raph/minesweeper/

Raphaël Collet implements an Oz Minesweeper solver using constraint satisfaction techniques to calculate mine probabilities.

Minesweeper Clone (2004-2009)

http://www.geocities.com/minesweeperclone
http://www.planet-minesweeper.com/clone

Official homepage for the Minesweeper Clone by Rodrigo Camargo. The site was originally hosted on geocities before moving to Planet Minesweeper. Clone was an official version for the world rankings from 2004-2013.

Mark Peters (1998)

http://www.auburn.net/~swifty/mswpr.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~epididymisle/mswpr.html

Single page site with personal scores. His final scores were 2-18-72 and he was ranked #3 on the Intermediate World Records site (1998) and #37 on the Expert World Records site (1998).

Andrew Schultz (1999)

http://www4.ncsu.edu:8030/~ajschult/mine.html

Personal site with a short Minesweeper guide with some downloads and the XYZZY cheat. Best scores 7-44-120.

Dan Cerveny (2001-2004)

http://www.geocities.com/kaminwx

Dan Cerveny was the top ranked American player and retired with 1-11-44 in 2004. He was the 3rd player to Sub50 (2001) and 1st player to Sub50 NF (2005) and for most of his career was Top 5 reaching World #2 on several occasions. He also managed the Active Ranking site for several years.

Charles Yu (2001-2004)

http://www.geocities.com/flyingking_2000/minesweeper.html

Charles was a Top100 player and retired with 2-16-58 in 2003.

Tim Kostka (2002-2003)

http://devtk.com/minesweeper/
http://www.nuprograms.com/minesweeper/

Tim Kostka wrote several articles about Dreamboards, Board Cycles and Randomness.

The Unofficial Minesweeper Page (1996-2000)

https://www.seanet.com/~niblox/sweeper.html

Minesweeper fan page with a guestbook and shareware downloads. Created by Patrick Fox and maintained until he abandoned Windows for Linux. There is a letter on the site from Ricardo Galletti who in 1996 was listed in first place with 55 seconds on the Expert World Records site.

Minesweeper Maniac (1999-2000)

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/8383/records.html

Jovan Milosevic wrote a strategy guide (pages missing) and started a world ranking (with 3 Expert players).

International Campaign to Ban Winmine (1999-2001)

http://rcm.usr.dsi.unimi.it/rcmweb/fnm/indexfnm.htm

Lobby group that campaigned to change Minesweeper from mines to flowers. The Windows XP Italy edition released "Prato Fiorito" (Field of Flowers) and Microsoft introduced flowers as a skin option with Windows Vista in 2006 globally. The site has an online "Winflower" version. Created by Sergio Chiodo on 16 Feb 1999 and updated until 31 Aug 2001.

Million Dollar Minesweeper (2000)

http://www.claymath.org/events/minesweepermath.htm

Ian Stewart wrote an article for Scientific American explaining the P=NP problem and how writing an efficient solver for Minesweeper could win the Clay Institute Millenium Prize. The Clay Institute reproduced the article and hosted a lecture on 1 November 2000.

Minesweeper (2003)

http://www.techuser.net/minesweeper.html

Usman Latif wrote several articles about first clicks, random boards and advanced tactics.

B.O.M.B. Minesweeper Clan Homepage (2004-2006)

http://minesweeperclan.mi.funpic.de
http://www.bomb-minesweeper.de

Site was created by three German players and was the first website with a 3BV/s ranking.