Yeah, it's NP-complete to decide whether a cell in Minesweeper must be a mine: https://logic.pku.edu.cn/ann_attachments/np.pdf.

In practice I suspect a SAT solver would make quick work of the positions that actually appear in games.

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maggit 5 days ago | parent [-]

There was a Minesweeper on here that used a SAT solver, but I cannot find it at the moment. As I recall, it never had any issue with resolving the board quickly. I think it dynamically resolved where the mines would be as you played the game, and if you clicked a square that could be a mine, it would be a mine, except, I believe, when there were no open squares that were safe.

(Edit: Here it is! https://pwmarcz.pl/kaboom/ And the write-up: https://pwmarcz.pl/blog/kaboom/ )

This is similar in spirit to my take on the game: https://magnushoff.com/articles/minesweeper/

Unfortunately, not being familiar with SAT solvers, my implementation can grind to a halt in some configurations :)

	▲	Gravityloss 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I wonder if one learned to play faster with this kind of minesweeper. I find in a lot of repetitive learning, you have a very noisy signal, you don't know if you succeeded because of luck or you did something right. This variant takes out the luck part.