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		it's the age old choice that anyone and everyone who has windows (and is smart enough to have the games option loaded) eventually faces. in my mind, the question boils down to 'which, minesweeper or solitaire, is a better and more efficient waste of time when one is bored and near a computer?'. and of course my answer has to be that minesweeper is far superior to in all ways solitaire. though solitaire enjoys quite a bit of fame and popularity, (of which i'm absolutely flabbergasted by) and is generally considered the time waster of choice by the populace. it enjoys prominent display in commercials, tv shows, and movies. but all in all, it is just a simple card game that relies mostly on luck. it is as pointless and mind numbing as poker, which is about as mind numbing as anything gets (well maybe 21 is worse, but you get the drift, right?). in some ways due to the popularity of solitaire i just have to say that i am starting to believe that solitaire is actually bad for the mind. the mindless moving of cards for one pile to another just has to promote brain rot. minesweeper, on the other hand, promotes the mind. it provides a stimulating puzzle that requires good pattern recognition skills and good ol' fashioned logic to be good at. it's always good to play a quick game just to make sure that your brain is still working. plus the minesweeper is just jam packed with surprises, every move is filled with anticipation of the information it will unleash and also tinged with a bit of fear for whether that one move will end that streak of mad minsweepin' skill. however, there is one practice in the game of minesweeper that i don't condone and practically despise. it's practically cheating to use the clear up the area with a right and left click, instead of manually clearing out the area, click by click. if the computer chooses to clean it up for you that's okay, but forcing the computer to clean it up is just wrong. even if the minesweeper designer did add that feature in, i think it's more of a newbie tool designed to make minesweeper more appealing to the general populace, which i guess is ok (more minesweeper lovin' of any kind is a good thing), but try not to get too dependent on it. so unless play it inappropriately, minesweeper proves its worth by providing fast (if you know what you're doing, you can click away at lightning speeds) and addictive gameplay that proves interesting for at least the first 5 games. and what does solitaire do? it rots the mind. so for those of you who are ready to switch games and purge that evil solitaire from your system, happy minesweepin'!