Does Minesweeper Make You Smarter? Insights & Benefits

Minesweeper is a blast from the past for many people. As one of the early programs bundled with Microsoft Windows, a lot of players probably first encountered it as a time-killing exercise on a slow day in the office, but it quickly became an enthralling mind-boosting diversion that drew players in. The game itself involved uncovering squares on a grid while looking to avoid the hidden “mines” that gave the game its name. One false step, and it was game over. Each square uncovered gave an indication as to how many mines were in adjacent squares, which gave players the chance to use logic and strategy.

Although it lacked the showy graphics and sophisticated game engine of other games, Minesweeper gained a following which has remained solid. And while some may still imagine it is just a diversion, experts have theorized that its cerebral approach may have benefits on the cognitive side. By weaving together strands of problem-solving, pattern recognition and short-term memory, Minesweeper has gained a new reputation as a brain training exercise disguised as a simple desktop game.

There is reason to wonder whether this reputation has been truly earned, or whether Minesweeper has simply been bundled in with other cerebral games as an afterthought, much as it seemed to be bundled in as a throwaway element of the early Windows experience. Below, we’ll look at the thinking behind that reputation, and give you some background as to why it is - or is not - the brain training experience that saw the light of day before that description became a common term.

Cognitive Benefits of Playing Minesweeper

Minesweeper is credited with the ability to engage multiple areas of cognitive function, turning it from a simple time-passing diversion to a legitimate workout for the brain. Key benefits which are claimed for it include:

• Logical reasoning: When playing, it is essential to analyze numerical clues and put these to use in deducing where the mines can be found. The interwoven clues - logical and numeric - need to be interpreted in just the right way to know where a mine could lay. It should be possible to play from the start and win, if you correctly analyse the clues laid out for you, and doing so will strengthen your critical reasoning skills.
• Improvement in focus: The single most common way of uncovering a mine and “losing” in Minesweeper is to move too quickly and pick a square that you haven’t ascertained is safe. To avoid making this error you need to pay constant, sustained attention to the squares you are uncovering and those you are still to uncover. Practice in this area will, with time, assist you in finding your focus in other areas of life.
• Easing of stress: When playing Minesweeper, you become absorbed in the task that lies before you. You need to clear squares and deduce the location of mines, and that’s all the game entails. This immersion is hugely beneficial in reducing stress, and boosting mental clarity by allowing you to clear your mind of all distractions. This ability to keep a clear mind will benefit you with repetitive tasks in other areas.

While present-day brain training apps are designed to algorithmically tick certain boxes related to boosting intelligence, Minesweeper has been doing much the same since before it became something you needed an app for. And the science behind these benefits is convincing, as anyone who has played the game can tell you.

Minesweeper and Problem Solving

Problem-solving is at the very core of Minesweeper’s gameplay style. Every move requires careful consideration; an assessment of the probabilities and risks involved in picking certain squares. Players will often face situations where they have to choose between playing safe and taking a calculated risk, which may carry a greater reward in return. This mirrors real-world decision-making, and gives players a chance to hone the areas of their brain involved in such decisions.

When, for example, you have uncovered a square that indicates there are two mines in adjacent squares, and there are three squares currently covered by a tile, you know that only one of those squares is safe to play. Will it be possible to find out which square, by uncovering others in the nearby area? Or will it be necessary to pick a square where there is only a 1 in 3 chance that it will be safe? Statistically, you want to clear the board in the fewest possible moves, so when is it time to take a calculated risk?

You may also learn adaptability and resilience from playing Minesweeper. Initially, when playing you are sure to make mistakes before you gain an appreciation for how the grid reveals itself. Learning from those mistakes is a valuable part of the experience and is also how humans strengthen the problem-solving areas of their brain. As time goes on you will find yourself seeking to make the fewest possible moves to uncover the board in the shortest possible time - and your decisions will be taken in order to give the best chance of this.

This commitment to taking decisions promptly, based on the information you have, and with the maximum reward for the minimum of risk, is a skill that will be directly applicable in general life. If you generally find yourself struggling with decision-making, regular sessions playing Minesweeper may be a very good way to exercise those centers in your brain.

Impact on Memory and Focus

Let’s make one thing clear before moving any further: nobody should be making any claims that any game can cure or remove the issues of ADHD or similar attention-related challenges. These are conditions that generally require expert intervention and can’t be “cured” in the classic sense. That being said, individuals with attentional difficulties may find that their ability to focus and to retain information is at least improved when they play a game like Minesweeper, which challenges you to remember where potential mine locations may be. This challenge draws on your short-term memory, which is one of the areas that ADHD and similar conditions affects most often.

Played over time, Minesweeper exercises the areas of the brain where memories are stored and the processes thar are involved in retrieving those memories. If you tend to find that you have issues around memory and focus, you should certainly discuss these with a specialist in the long term, but in the short term you may find the following benefits from playing Minesweeper:

• Playing Minesweeper successfully demands a level of precision and accuracy that can only be achieved when focusing for extended periods. Practising the game will strengthen these centers in the brain.
• Making decisions based on concentration can be stressful because of the stakes involved, often resulting in what people refer to as decision paralysis. Minesweeper offers a low-stakes environment in which to develop decision-making skills.
• While evidence of this specific benefit is mostly anecdotal, people who play games like Minesweeper have indicated that their ability to filter out distractions during gameplay improves over time. Developing this ability is undoubtedly a positive thing.

While we cannot stress enough that none of this should be seen as a substitute for appropriate treatment of neurodevelopmental issues like ADHD, gaining the skills above can certainly augment such treatments. In much the same way as crutches will not repair a broken leg but will certainly provide a better environment for healing, having the benefits of Minesweeper to call on will assist the development of focus and attention centers in the brain.

Strategies for Advanced Minesweeper Play

Before you have a frame of reference for playing Minesweeper, some of your early play may resemble a scattergun, try-it-and-see approach to clicking on tiles. As we gain in understanding of the game, however, there are some skills and strategies that can deliver beneficial results.

Start with the corners

If you click on a square in the center of the grid, there will be eight squares around it where mines can possibly lie. So if you uncover a square and there is one adjacent square with a mine in it, you’re barely any the wiser as to where that mine might lay. Clicking on a corner square, on the other hand, means that there are only three adjacent squares. In that case, the number revealed when you click on that corner is much more informative. Revealing the corners first can furnish you with more information and reveal useful patterns much earlier in the game.

Cluster analysis

The more squares that are uncovered (without revealing a mine!), the easier it becomes to read the grid, and the more information you will have to make your decisions. A cluster of uncovered squares with different numbers in them can point you to where mines might be found. If there are a number of squares with the number “2” in them, next to one where the number is “3”, then it is obvious that there are fewer clear squares around the “3”. You can then, more safely, click on squares further away from that one.

Probability

Sometimes you will need to make moves that are a matter of chance. The more you play, the less often this will happen, but it will happen on occasion. Being able to recognize when your next move needs to be “blind” allows you to accept the need for risk in the game. Sometimes, you’ll need a modicum of “risk tolerance” to advance in the game, so paying attention when you make these moves allows you to gain an understanding of when you should take such a risk.

These skills are transferable; making decisions that narrow down the possibilities, and which allow you to plan things out based on more information, will be useful in everyday life.

Comparing Other Brain-Boosting Games

It is clear that Minesweeper offers definite cognitive benefits - but is it uniquely beneficial in this regard, and are there other games that you would be better-advised to pick up instead? In its capacity for boosting the brain, Minesweeper is often compared to games such as Chess and Sudoku, as well as the popular brain-training apps that are available for Apple and Android devices. How well does it fare by comparison with these other games?

In truth, the real question is not whether any of these games are better than the others, but how they compare in terms of the benefits they offer. Minesweeper is unique - not better than Chess or Sudoku - in that it combines logical reasoning with risk management. It is an ideal option for people looking to engage their mind and exercise decision-making centers without the steep learning curve that Chess has.

Sudoku is similar to Minesweeper in many ways, but there is always a definitive way to play Sudoku, and it does not offer the same element of uncertainty that is a characteristic of Minesweeper. This makes the latter a better way of training the brain’s risk management centers. Again, there is absolutely no reason not to play both - each has its clear benefits - but the balance of Minesweeper makes it a great all-round method of brain training.

As for brain training apps, they also have their place, but perhaps the key difference with these options is that they generally use different games to train different areas of the brain. If you have a specific area that you want to train, then picking a specific game on a brain training app may work for you. If you want an all-brain workout in a self-contained game, then Minesweeper is well worth the time involved.

In conclusion, Minesweeper’s enduring appeal speaks for itself in terms of how well it engages the human brain. Its benefits for brain training may not have been the intention when it was developed, but they are the very definition of a happy accident. While there is no doubt that more research would be beneficial in terms of quantifying its full impact, Minesweeper definitely makes a compelling case for itself as a game that will make you smarter.

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