Minesweeper

What is Minesweeper?

Minesweeper is the classic logic puzzle: a grid of covered cells hides a number of mines, and every cell you uncover shows how many of its eight neighbours are mines. Use those numbers to work out where the mines are, flag them, and open every safe cell to win. This version plays the three standard sizes, Beginner (9×9, 10 mines), Intermediate (16×16, 40 mines) and Expert (30×16, 99 mines), plus custom boards up to 50×30.

Your first click is always safe and always opens an area. With No guessing switched on (the default), every board is checked by a solver before you see it, so it can be cleared by logic alone without a single 50/50 coin flip. Chording, question marks, keyboard play, best times, win statistics and an automatically saved game are all built in, and on phones you can flag with a long-press or a Flag mode switch, then pan and pinch-zoom big boards.

How to play Minesweeper

1. Pick a level at the top, then click or tap any cell. The first one is always safe and opens an area of the field.
2. Each number tells you how many mines touch that cell, including diagonals. A blank cell has no mines around it.
3. Flag a cell you know is a mine: right-click it, long-press it on a touch screen, or switch to Flag mode and tap it. The counter on the left shows mines minus flags.
4. When a number already has that many flags around it, click or tap the number to open all of its other neighbours at once (chording).
5. Open every cell that isn't a mine to win. Hit a mine and the game is over: tap the face to start again or retry the same board.
6. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys to move, Space or Enter to reveal, F to flag and C to chord.

Minesweeper tips and strategy

• Start at the edges of the opening: a 1 touching only one covered cell means that cell is a mine.
• Learn the 1-2-1 and 1-2-2-1 patterns along a wall; they tell you exactly which cells are mines without any counting.
• Compare neighbouring numbers. If a 1 and a 2 share all but one covered cell, the extra cell next to the 2 must be a mine.
• Chord as soon as a number is satisfied. It is the biggest single speed-up and the habit that separates fast players from slow ones.
• Near the end, count the mines left. The total can decide cells that the local numbers can't.
• On a phone, use Flag mode when flagging lots of cells in a row, and pinch to zoom out when you want to see the whole Expert board.

Minesweeper rules in detail

The board is a rectangle of covered cells with a fixed number of hidden mines. Uncovering a mine ends the game. Uncovering a safe cell shows a number from 1 to 8, the count of mines among its up to eight neighbours, or a blank if there are none. A blank cell automatically opens all of its neighbours, which is why one click can clear a large area. Flags are only reminders: they don't affect the rules, but chording uses them. Clicking a revealed number whose neighbouring flags equal the number opens every other neighbour, and if one of your flags was wrong, that opens a mine.

You win when every safe cell is open; you don't have to flag the mines. The timer starts with your first reveal. Best times on Beginner, Intermediate and Expert are kept for games won without hints, along with games played, wins, win rate and your current and best winning streak.

What 'no guessing' means

In traditional Minesweeper the mines are placed at random, so some boards reach a point where two cells are equally likely to hold a mine and you have to guess. With No guessing on, each board is generated after your first click and then played through by a solver that only makes moves it can prove: single-number rules, comparisons between overlapping numbers, and a full check of every possible mine arrangement along the edge of the opened area, including the total mine count. Only boards the solver can clear from your first click without guessing are dealt. If you get stuck, there is always a logical move somewhere, and the Hint button will show you one.

Generation runs in a background thread and usually takes a fraction of a second, even on Expert. Very dense custom boards may have no guess-free layout; in that case you get a classic random board and a short notice. You can turn No guessing off in Settings for the traditional experience.

A short history of Minesweeper

Mine-hunting grid games appeared on home computers in the 1980s, but the version most people know is the one that shipped with Microsoft Windows in the early 1990s. Its three sizes, Beginner, Intermediate and Expert, became the standard that competitive players still use. Players measure speed with 3BV, the minimum number of clicks a board needs, and 3BV per second, both of which are shown when you win here.

Minesweeper FAQ