Advanced Minesweeper Strategies?

Turn off the Question marks. They only slow you down. Once you have all the bombs in a square marked you can click both mouse buttons to clear all adjacent squares. Learn to recognize patterns so you can mark or clear stuff as quick as possible.

I usually start by trying to click about a dozen widely scattered squares at random. Quite often this hits a mine right away, but once in a while, maybe 1 in 10, you will open a couple of large areas this way. Large open areas are good b/c you have all those 1-mine corners to start working from.

The alternative, trying to work carefully starting from a single non-mine, or just a small open area, takes GOBS of time to get going. In 30 seconds with the multiple random stab approach, you can easily get to a starting position with just 2-3 seconds on the clock, that's as opened up as working carefully with all 30 seconds, or more, on the clock.

You shouldn't forget that you don't need to place all flags, you just need to open all squares without the mines.