I was thinking about creating minesweeper in python/pygame. However, I was stumped when I was trying to figure out a way to guarantee a large swath of empty space on the first move (such as in minesweeper on Windows XP). Does anyone have a method for doing this? I don't want code, just words.
Thank you in advance
Firstly, that doesn't happen on Windows XP (or any common minesweeper implementation) every time. It's very likely to if you are playing on a low difficulty though.
There are some ideas though;

Generate the map after the first click. This allows you to avoid the area the user clicked, giving you the large swath you desire - simply by tweaking your mine placement algorithm to avoid the area around where the user clicked.
Generate the map - but change it if insufficient space would be exposed. This will (probably) result in a faster reaction on the first click as the map will likely be already generated.
Don't do this. As mentioned previously - this is not how windows XP worked. But there was a high likelihood of this just happening naturally on easier difficulties. It might be worth recalculating the map if the user clicks on a mine on the first move, but otherwise leave it to your random distribution. Remember that (except some custom modes) there are going to be many more empty squares than ones with mines.

Hopefully that will get you started.
Exposing a Large Swath of Tiles in Minesweeper