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Using Playing Field Numbers to Deduce Seed Locations and Explore the Field Recognizing and Exploiting Less Obvious Field Patterns

There are only so many possible combinations of seed locations and numbers, and so as you get more experience in Vinesweeper, you’ll start to see the same arrangements of holes, numbers and empty spaces begin to appear over and over again. Some of these patterns can immediately tell you where seeds are located in particular arrangements, so you can set flags and get points without wasting time digging up holes unnecessarily.

Each pattern is, of course, slightly different, but they all generally have one common attribute: a set of indicator numbers separating an open space area from a region with holes that haven’t been dug. This setup naturally arises when you click on a “zero” to open up part of the field. The empty zero areas eliminate some of the possible places where seeds can be, which is what makes it possible to figure out where the seeds actually are.

Be sure to watch out for “trick patterns” that look like real ones but aren’t. If you see something that looks like one of the patterns I describe but there are extra holes near the numbers, then it probably won’t work! Remember that you usually want a setup where you have numbers separating an open area from an area with unopened holes.

I’ll start here with what I call simple field patterns. These are ones where the location of the seed is obvious because somewhere in the pattern is a square that has a number of holes next to it equal to its number—we know immediately that they all must be seeds. Later on we’ll explore some patterns where it is not immediately obvious where the seeds are.

This is probably the most commonplace of the simple field patterns, and is also the easiest to understand. In this situation, you have a “1” with two other “1”s next to it, five empty spaces and a hole. Obviously, that hole must have a seed in it.

It is quite common to see this pattern appear after making even just one click in an open part of the field. In Figure 308 I clicked once and got not one but two of these patterns, letting me place a pair of flags immediately.

Sometimes even more of the field is opened up and you get a “double corner” 1-1-1 pattern, as shown in Figure 309.

This is a fairly common pattern, and a nice one because it lets you plant two flags right away. In it, the first “2” is next to only two holes, so you can flag both of the holes right away. The last number can be “2” or a higher number (cannot be “1”). An example is shown in Figure 310.

This pattern, which is not very common, is like having a pair of Corner 1-1-2-2 patterns on the same corner. All three of the holes touching the four “2”s are seeds (Figure 311).

One of the advantages of working near edges of the playing field is that you eliminate some possible seed locations by virtue of nothing being next to a few of the numbers. In Figure 312 we see an example where we have a “2-2” pattern on the edge of the field. The “2” right at the edge only abuts two holes, so they both must be seeds.

Here I dug an area and got two of these patterns right near each other! (See Figure 313.) Boom, four seeds flagged, thank you very much. J

The presence of the “3” makes this seem like a complicated pattern, but it really isn’t. Any time you have a string of numbers with empty spaces on one side and holes on the other, there are only three holes next to any number. So if that number is a “3”, guess what? Right: they are all seeds. An example can be seen in Figure 314; we also saw it in Figure 297.

This pattern also seems complicated, but is actually simple once you look at it closely—and it occurs more often than you’d expect. The “2” in the middle has only two holes touching it, so they must be seeds (Figure 315).

An added bonus here is that you can easily dig all of the other holes next to those “1”s to open up more of the field.

Using Playing Field Numbers to Deduce Seed Locations and Explore the Field Recognizing and Exploiting Less Obvious Field Patterns