How to Play Minesweeper
Minesweeper is a pure logic puzzle wearing an arcade costume. A grid hides a fixed number of mines. Clicking a cell either reveals a number — telling you how many of the eight surrounding cells contain a mine — or reveals a mine, which ends the game. Clear every safe cell and you win.
There is no reaction, no timing and no luck beyond a small number of genuinely ambiguous positions. Almost everything on a Minesweeper board is deducible, and learning to see the deductions is the entire game.
Controls
- Tap or click a cell to reveal it
- Long-press on mobile, or right-click on desktop, to place a flag
- The flag button toggles a mode where tapping places flags instead of revealing
Your first click is always safe and opens a chunk of the board, so there is never a position where you lose on move one.
Difficulty levels
- Easy — 9x9 grid with 10 mines
- Medium — 12x12 grid with 24 mines
- Hard — 16x16 grid with 50 mines
Mine density matters more than grid size. A larger board with the same density is longer but not harder; a denser board forces more genuinely ambiguous decisions.
The two rules that solve most boards
Almost all of Minesweeper reduces to two patterns, and once you can apply them automatically you will clear easy boards without conscious thought.
Rule one — all mines. If a numbered cell's number equals the number of unrevealed cells touching it, then every one of those cells is a mine. A "3" with exactly three unknown neighbours means all three are mines. Flag them.
Rule two — all clear. If a numbered cell already has as many flags around it as its number, then every remaining unrevealed neighbour is safe. A "2" with two flags beside it means all its other neighbours can be opened freely.
These two rules chain into each other. Applying rule one creates flags, which enable rule two, which reveals new numbers, which enable rule one again. Most of a board unzips this way.
When the simple rules stall
Eventually you reach a position where no single number is decisive. The technique here is to compare adjacent numbers.
Suppose a "1" and a "2" sit next to each other and share two unknown neighbours, with the "2" touching one extra cell that the "1" does not. The "1" tells you exactly one mine is in the shared pair. The "2" needs two mines among the shared pair plus its extra cell. Since the shared pair can only supply one, the extra cell must be a mine.
This kind of reasoning — taking what two cells each require and subtracting the overlap — solves the vast majority of positions that look stuck. It is also the point where Minesweeper stops being a casual click game and becomes a genuine puzzle.
Flag discipline
Some fast players skip flagging entirely to save time. For everyone else, flagging is what makes the board readable: rule two is only usable at a glance if the mines you have identified are actually marked. Flag as you deduce, and the board stays legible instead of requiring you to re-derive the same facts repeatedly.
Guessing well
A small number of positions are genuinely ambiguous, and no amount of skill will resolve them. When you must guess, guess at the edges or corners. Edge cells touch five neighbours instead of eight and corner cells touch three, which means fewer possible mine arrangements and better odds. Guessing in the open middle of the board is the worst option available.
A piece of computing history
Minesweeper shipped with Windows 3.1 in 1992, ostensibly to teach people to use a mouse — specifically the right button, which flagging requires. It became one of the most-played games ever written almost by accident. It is also of real mathematical interest: determining whether a given Minesweeper position is consistent is NP-complete, which means the general problem is as hard as any problem in that class.
Plays on any device
Minesweeper runs in your browser using HTML5 and works on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Nothing to install, no signup, and your best times are stored locally.
