@Stephan: Perhaps a bit late, but sorry for stole you an opportunity to win another T  , i just couldn't resist...

My goal on T3 was to get a sub_6s, and of course, i used the infamous hexx' Int strategy slightly modified . Slightly because i cleaned up 2 rows at the same time in order to save clicks. Therefore i was able to finish a "16 3bv" board in just 12 clicks in a grid that could be solved in 10 as best scenario.

The part i enjoyed the most was the last one, the conjoined 211 paterns solved amazingly in just 2 clicks.

The vid is here: https://youtu.be/gkgVJ-ZiNIw

Thank you, EWQM. I didn't have a real strategy. Since I am not capable of switching playing styles during a game I just flagged and tried to be as fast and accurate as possible. Maybe a 70.xx would've been possible for me following that approach but I busted several promising boards.

Nymike pointed out some interesting trivia to me yesterday afternoon:

He was wondering whether I was holding, since it was quite a while since I last finished a tournament outside of division 1's top3. I just check via Stephan's awesome statistics tables for the tournaments and it turns out that S70T6 ended a streak of 81 tournament submissions that resulted in top3 finishes in division 1. I also checked how long Stephan's, Hexx', Lutz' and Maruda's longest such streaks were. Found none above 50.

@EWQM.:

Got this one: https://youtu.be/LOTpeGjncLQ and no more playing this week ...

EWQM., you were right - even sub-45 was possible. And congratulations for winning another season , with a large gap to all further competitors.

@Stephan: Thanks! I almost forgot to play last saturday evening, for some reason thinking I still had another day left. Luckily it didn't take too long to get a board that allowed for a fast time. I wouldn't exactly call 7 points a large gap for winning 5 out of 8 boards. Without hexx' involvement it would have only been 6 points and T5 and T8 have been close calls.

I also expect S71 to become an even closer competition as I won't be able to play (as) much (as usual).

@hexx: It's just hundreds and hundres of hours of practice and yet your records on 3 of the 4 standard levels and most tournament board beat mine.

@Stephan: The issue of age sounds a bit of excuse. This game is all about motivation .

I´m motivated to play but can't do it every week, therefore i play just for fun. My goal for current T is a sub-4s , so my 3.99s is good enough and it will be final score.

Allow me to presume you will score between 3.20s and 3.40s and EWQM. will win/beat you (if he plays as much as usual...) making something between 3.10s and 3.30s . It's so funny to see EWQM. beating you sistematically but he avoids to overtake my best scores (3.01s for this T board).

@Stephan:
-Currently my motivation for Speedcubing is much higher than for Nonosweeper.
-Even if I had had more time to play, I'm just not cut out for these boards. you and hexx are way too fast.
-If you had beaten my time on S70T5 or T8 and had taken first place, our total difference would have been only 3 points instead of 7. If you had beaten me on both boards, you could have won the season.
-S71T3 is again not my kind of board. I'm lucky that my current time required only a few minutes of playing. (Played maybe 15 minutes on sunday and 10 minutes tonight)

@hexx: I never really felt motivated to beat all-time bests for tournament boards. Half of them are too fast for me to bother with anyway.

@Stephan:

About T3: Couldn't play on T3, but why should i beat Harryck's 3.70s if such score is ...hmmm ... let's say ..."running faster than cheetah"
Anything related to Harryck Repse, namely his standard levels records and many (if not all!!!) T submissions, is all about cheat and cheat and CHEAT AND ....SHIT
Anyway, i'm now playing T3 in a custom board with 5.08s as best score for the moment. Perhaps i can make a 4.70s or so. The 3.70s is beyond Harryck's real capacity.

About T4: With my 4.66s i saved you 1 point in your Season 71 quest, i hope you win it . As always i've the vid. If you wanna see it please let me know.

Thanks to EWQM. for not playing as much as usual . It was the first time that I could win a season which included tournaments that took place during January .

Nooooo i could have improved my time for t5 a whole bunch but i forgot all about it yesterday ;_;

@EWQM.: You wrote:
got 23.36 in S75T7 in literally the first game I completed, 0.85s faster than 2nd place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFPm_LV3HW0

Might have been 0.85s faster than my time at that point, but your current 23.02 is still 1.56s slower than my 21.46. Expect you to submit your sub19 on Saturday evening

Minor correction to Mike's post: I paid for the internet cafe in 2010 where we played the Minesweper and Nonosweeper tournaments. I also paid for the youth hostel but the guys who stayed there paid me that money back.

About 40 seconds barrier: What is called sub40 in Minesweeper actually means times faster than 39.00 seconds. Breaking sub40 took me over a year and in total I got close to 80 sub40s. The count for actual solves below 40 seconds is well above 100 though.

More trivia: throughout mostof my active time in Minesweeper I played 3 hours and more every day. That means over 20 hours every week, for a while even over 30 hours. Now imagine what happens if you stop playing minesweeper and instead focus on Nonosweeper. Hint: S57 and onwards.

Mine is the same . Just not managed to get one of the easier games (with rare guessing patterns) in fast click time till the end.

@hexx:
I don't care about winning T8, but will be lucky to win S75 as it's a hard competition to win a season.

And I really don't understand your problem. You are referring to my int score. S75/T8 has in common absolutely nothing with playing int level. A player of S75/T8 needs to see quickly which squares need to be opened. There are 800 squares, of them 777 mines. So one needs to find 23 squares. For my 13.00, I needed 22 clicks as there were two coherent non-mine squares. If the other squares have a good distribution on the grid, you can open two squares per second, which would result in a sub13.

The video of the 13.00 (showing replay etc. directly after finishing the game) is available here:
S75/T8 13.00

But why comparing with int level? I didn't play int level for ages. My best int times are from 2007/2008. My last 12 was achieved in 2011. Why should I waist time with standard level when my goal is to collect points for winning a season? So, each week, I (aged 39) practice the current T board during a few hours, nothing else, so I usually get some improvement until reaching my personal limit. --> Nothing magic, nothing musceteery, just focusing on T boards.

Am tired now, physically and emotionally.

If Lutz wins S76/T8, I finish 2nd and you finish 3rd, we would all finish the season with 50 points.

It's more than likely that S76 will set a new record for the 3rd place in division 1 with the most points. So far we had 46 points in S15, S43, S49, S72 and S73.

S72 saw the top 3 getting a combined 151 points with only Sam taking a 3rd place away from Lutz. In S73 we got 150 points and there's a chance we might get 150 points again this season.

About S76/T7: Got a very lucky board, wouldn't mind never seeing it again as a tournament board.^^

About S76/T8: Why would you even try playing without a few unforced guesses? I got a few mid 40s within a reasonable amount of time on monday before I got that 38.

Well, that was hard work. I did not even realize that I might have a chance to win the season until I read your posts. Then I got motivated.

Unforced guessing can turn a good board into an excellent one, I think. So I use this strategy frequently (only at the beginning and only two or three times, of course).

Congrats Lutz! That was an amazing comeback in T8 and I likely the first time ever that someone jumped from 3rd to 1st place in division 1 in the last tournament.

I didn't really know how to handle that board so I was quite happy with my 54.04. Just tried your strategy and got a 61.45 ... seems that I'm just too slow.^^

@Stephan: Congrats on winning S78. I won't have time to play tomorrow as I won't be home before 22:00 after attending a speedcubing competition in Schwandorf. (Not that I would have a chance against you on this kind of board anyways )

@EWQM.: Thank you, I'm really happy that me old man is still able to be competitive in some grids and that I could win this season .
Good luck for you on day 2 at the Schwandorf Open!

@Lutz: Congrats for obviously having finished S79/T4 more than once .
I fought very hard until I could finish a single board. And it was the only one, all before had been lost with less than 60% of the grid solved. So, I'm very lucky with #2 , was about to give up.

Congratulations Lutz, Stephan and Chronic. This was probably the hardest tournament board ever (that was solved and didn't get replaced by a different board).

I got to 40 or less mines several times but then either had to guess or lost because of my own mistakes.

@Stephan: Mike asked my on sunday whether I thought we should ask for a replacement. I said let's wait until Tuesday and see if Lutz can solve it. I was quite motivated to complete a board but didn't have a lot of time to play Nonosweeper last week. I suppose I spent around 3 hours on T4 and most likely won't spend any more time on T5.

@all: If you have problems in playing S79/T6 as the software announces "Tournament info is up-to-date", you can update the T code manually. Use http://nonosweeper.com/cgi-bin/tourncode.cgi and update the T code and the closure date in %appdata%\Nonosweeper\Nonosweeper.ini.

@Stephan and Lutz: I won't have time to play on saturday so I'll stay at 111. Do with this info whatever you want.

@EWQM.: S83/T2 14x13/140 19.85s was too fast for me. This season will be an easy catch for you!

@EWQM.: After 3rd tournament, points are likely 24 vs. 18. If Lutz appears, or Caren, Maruda, anyone will catch up, it'll be 24 vs. 16, 15, 14. Don't think that I'll have a real chance .

4th tournament of the season and 4th PB on previously played tournament boards including 3 new overall PBs for these boards. I like how this season goes so far

But where is Lutz? Did anyone hear from him?

Welcome back, Lutz! Hope you had a great holiday.

Thank you. I'm sure 115 should be possible with a decent board, maybe even 110 with enough luck.

No danger from my side. Got a 101 on a relatively easy board, so I guess, for me, sub-100 will be the limit. But there are other players there, guess Lutz will take the fight for #1.

Actually, I am happy with my sub100. If I had more time to play I probably could go for a sub90. But never in a million years could I get a better time than EWQM's 77.

@EWQM.: I didn't find time to play a lot (only Sunday evening and Monday evening, not the best times for me to play fast). So, my time was the result of finishing at least some boards (stopped after the 3rd), with flagging mines and opening safe squares. On Monday evening, I was aware that I would never beat your time and just wanted to stay in #2. As this looked okay yesterday, I didn't spend more time.

This week, I'm able to play NF style, think low 70 would be possible for me. 57 is an illusion for me to beat. So, be assured that myself won't spend too much time on this board.

Stephan wrote on Mar 25^th, 2018 at 4:42pm:


Very low 70 indeed , but still ages away from 50

I just might participate a little bit soon

Welcome back, Jon! Good to see you here around again. Btw, it was season 4 when you participated for the last time. So, you only skipped ~13 years or 648 tournament weeks .

And with Jon, division 1 hat 15 players, so only 1 player more, and we would have had division 2 back .

Small heads up to everyone else who, like me, has a hard time getting a decent solve on these small boards like S86T1:

You can play this board pretty much in the same way that can be used to achieve 1 second games on Beginner level. Assume that the leftmost column is always a 10. This is the case for ~18.7% of games so roughly every 5th to 6th board. Further solve rows from top to bottom, assuming mines are always in the leftmost possible position. Obviously you're going to lose a lot more games but you should be able to get a fast time within 10 minutes of playing.

@Stephan: Congratulations! A well deserved win!

@Lutz: Nooooooo! where were you? JK, hope you enjoyed the good weather yesterday.

Hehe, maybe I should share some more of my strategies for the dfferent tournament boards. You were definitely right about your 1.87.

A different strategy could also be successful: Just play as long as you get the perfect board .

thanks stephan a.k.a mr. statistics you guys are fantastic and this was my only chance to win a tournament. i spent a lot of time on this one and it was real fun to play

Congratulations Maruda! Great result on a quite difficult board!

@Stephan: Do you know what the longest streak of consecutive T wins are for 1, 2 and 3 different players?

My strategy for S86T5: Half hexx NF.

Skip boards until you get one with a lot of mines in the top and bottom row. If they aren't solvable right away, guess quickly. Then solve columns left to right or right to left.

@EWQM.: Was a big portion of luck to finish the nice board in a time that was exactly 0.01 faster than yours in S86T7. Sorry for stealing this T win.

It's a surprise indeed that you didn't submit a faster time in late Saturday evening - would had expected that .

Gonna take at least a few weeks off from playing Nonosweeper. Have fun, guys.

Thank you, EWQM. I used the opportunity to finish season 88 with 64 points . Included some boards that turned out to be extremely hard to win for me with Lutz as main opponent and specialist for bigger boards, but I'm lucky about the achievement anyway .

And as I was in vacation afterwards, and Lutz might have taken some off-time as well, S89/T1 was probably the very first T board in history without a single German player submitting a time

Not on my side as well. I don't like the big boards with medium density. So, congrats on your impressive win in T2 (and your very challenging time in T3) 

@EWQM.: Bad news that you retire from tournaments. Was always a pleasure to compete with you. I can understand your step as I am also wondering how long I will continue. Maybe I can reach 200 wins and stop then .

Season 89 is possibly going to be one of the toughest in last few years. After three tournaments played, we have five players within a range of 10 to 18 points collected. Of course, it can still get boring if Lutz finishes the season with 7-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 after missing T1 .

Stephan wrote on Mar 23^rd, 2019 at 1:48pm:


Yeah, this board is tough. Success depends very much on board selection, I think.

I solved two boards: 595 s (with one 50/50 guess at the end) and 440 s (three or four guesses with minor risk).

Btw: The points table doesn't seem to be correct. You should have 49 points by now, two more than me.

Edit: Right after I posted this I got an unexpected 371. Played with no pressure, just tried to improve speed if possible. Just one or two unrisky guesses. Now I will stop playing.

Yariv has corrected the points of S91T5. So, points tables should be correct now. And as predicted, Lutz is now listed as season winner. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Chronic - very decent time on a difficult board, so a well deserved first T win !

Unfun fact : Since EWQM. returned, he won every single tournament in which he submitted a time. 10 times, 3 skipped. He seems to be unbeatable .

My strategy for S97T3: Skip boards until you get one with few numbers but many mines in the left or right column. Solve/guess this outer column. Then solve/guess the top or bottom row and from there on start solving rows. Try to solve parts of the other outer column as you progress through the rows. I found that this takes a bit longer untill I can solve a board but the solving time itself is much quicker.

Hey Stephan,

I tried the classic strategy for a bit but quickly gave up when even games that felt super fast were still quite a bit slower than your time. Too bad you didn't get to play more. With that single first game of yours being so fast it probably would have been very competitive.

Your time in S97T4 was, as expected , amazing. Congratulations! You had me playing until 2 in the morning trying to beat your time at the very last moment.

Don't worry about your joke

In a more equal playing setting (i.e both of us spending the same amount of time on a tournament level instead of me spending way too many hours each week) you'd be competitive on almost every board except those that take extremely long to finish. On smaller or generally faster boards you're still the best.

S97T7 was quite interesting. I didn't really follow any special strategy and got that 120 rather easily. I guess pracitcing Genius level really paid off here. For S97T8 I am pretty much done. That sub4 was only possible with 4 of the squares being close to each other near the left edge and the other 3 squares ebing in a single line near the right edge. I'm sure it's a difficult time to beat but with an equally lucky board I have no doubt you can do it.

S97T8 also has as an interesting/fun/unfun aspect to it: In order to secure the season I either would have needed to not play at all or beat a time of around 50 seconds.

P.S. I can assure you that I won't be playing as much next season and especially very few or even no Saturday nights at all. Sorry to have dampened your mood some Sunday mornings

Happy season 100, everybody. Fun to be participating in these again, even if I'm a bit slower than I used to be.

Funny, shortly before your post, Stephan, I had also checked my statistics and noticed that I have been playing Nonosweeper since June 2009. I really didn't expect to be around for almost twelve years now.

Your numbers are of course even more impressive, congratulations on so much stamina! And of course I should have congratulated you a few weeks ago on a fantastic season 102 ... very well done!

Yes, S103T6 was a crazy board but I kind of loved it. I played 25h+ (and slept far too little) but was only able to complete a single board.

I also think it's a shame that there are hardly any players left. Well, we live in the age of smartphones. And new players are likely deterred by the $ 12.95 cost for the Pro version. 

Hi Stephan, hi Lutz. It's great to see the site is still around and the weekly tournament are still happening. I am mostly back to playing Minesweeper these days over at minesweeper.online. Every so often someone in the chat asks what 3BV is or happens to look up my name on Youtube and then finds a Nonosweeper video.

S107_T6 has been changed to these specs: Grid: 37 x 30. Mines: 999 (instead of error-creating 1070 before). Submission period has been extended till 2021-08-28. A big thank you to Yariv for changing this!

I wish you all a Happy New Year too!

I am very sorry to see you go, Stephan. It has always been a pleasure for me to compete with you. Your ability to solve most board types extremely fast often motivated me to improve my strategies. However, I can understand a certain fatigue after all those years. As for my part, I will keep going a while longer, though.

Take care and all the best!