Minesweeper

Minesweeper is the timeless logic puzzle of clearing a grid without uncovering a hidden mine, and this build stays faithful to the version popularised on early Windows computers while adding the modern conveniences good players expect. You reveal squares, read the numbers that appear, and use them to deduce exactly where the mines are — flagging danger and clearing safety until the whole field is open. It is free to play, needs no account, and keeps only your best times on your own device. There is nothing to buy and nothing at risk here: just clean, deductive logic against a grid.

This guide covers the exact game on this site — its three difficulty levels, its first-click-safe guarantee, its flagging and chording controls, and its timer and best-time tracking — and then teaches the deduction patterns and techniques that turn Minesweeper from a nervy guessing game into a solvable puzzle. Everything described is true to how the game is built.

What is Minesweeper?

Minesweeper presents a rectangular grid of covered squares. A fixed number of mines are hidden among them. When you reveal a safe square, it shows a number from 1 to 8 telling you how many mines touch that square across its eight neighbours — or nothing at all if no mines are adjacent, in which case the game automatically opens the surrounding empty area for you. Reveal a mine, and the round ends. Reveal every safe square, and you win. The numbers are the entire game: each one is a small logic clue, and Minesweeper is the art of combining those clues into certainty.

The three difficulty levels

Our build offers the three classic levels, and each changes the character of the game:

• Beginner — a 9×9 grid with 10 mines. Roomy and forgiving, perfect for learning the number patterns without much pressure.
• Intermediate — a 16×16 grid with 40 mines. The mine density climbs, and you will meet situations that require chaining several clues together.
• Expert — a 30×16 grid with 99 mines. The full test: a wide board, dense mines, and a real premium on efficient, confident play. On smaller screens the board scrolls so every square stays reachable.

The mines-remaining counter starts at the mine count for your chosen level and drops by one each time you place a flag, giving you a running tally of how many mines you still have to account for.

The first click is always safe

You never lose on your opening move. In this build the minefield is generated after your first reveal, and the generator deliberately excludes the square you clicked and all eight of its neighbours. That means your first click always lands in an open area — usually opening up a sizeable region of numbers and blanks to start reasoning from. It removes the pure coin-flip that a first-move loss would be, and it means the opening of every game rewards thinking rather than luck. (On a board too small to keep the full safe zone, the guarantee falls back to protecting at least the clicked square itself.) If you want the full story of how that guarantee is engineered, our blog post on how we built the Minesweeper first-click guarantee walks through it.

How to play, step by step

1. Pick a difficulty. The grid appears fully covered, with the mines-remaining counter set to that level’s mine total.
2. Reveal your first square anywhere — it is guaranteed safe, and the timer starts on this first reveal. A patch of numbers and blank squares opens up.
3. Read the numbers. Each tells you how many of its eight neighbours hold a mine. A blank (zero) means all its neighbours are safe and are opened automatically.
4. Use the numbers to deduce which covered squares must be mines and which must be safe. Flag the mines and reveal the safe squares.
5. Continue until every safe square is revealed. Clear the whole field and you win; the game auto-flags any mines you had not yet marked, stops the clock, and shows your time.

Mouse controls

• Left-click — reveal a covered square.
• Right-click — place or remove a flag on a covered square you believe hides a mine.
• Left-click a revealed number — chord (see below): if you have already flagged as many neighbours as the number, this reveals all its remaining unflagged neighbours at once.

Touch controls

• Tap — reveal a covered square.
• Long-press — place or remove a flag. Hold your finger on a square for a moment and it flags instead of revealing.
• Tap a revealed number — chords it, exactly like a mouse click, once its flags are satisfied.

Keyboard controls

• Arrow keys — move the focus highlight around the grid.
• Enter — reveal the focused square, or chord it if it is an already-revealed number.
• F — flag or unflag the focused square.

The focused square is announced with its contents and position, so keyboard and screen-reader players get the same information sighted players read from the board.

Flagging and chording explained

Two tools make you dramatically faster once you understand them.

Flagging marks a square you have deduced is a mine. Flags do not affect whether you win — you win by revealing all safe squares, not by flagging mines — but they are essential bookkeeping. They stop you from clicking a known mine by accident, they keep the mines-remaining counter meaningful, and they are what makes chording possible.

Chording is the speed technique. When a revealed number already has exactly that many flags around it, you can click (or tap, or press Enter on) the number itself to instantly reveal all of its remaining unflagged neighbours. For example, a “2” with two flags beside it can be chorded to safely open its other neighbours in a single action. Chording turns a careful deduction into one quick move and is the backbone of fast, clean play — but it only fires when the flag count matches the number, so it never reveals a square you have not logically cleared.

Reading the numbers: core deduction

Every number is a constraint: it says “exactly this many mines sit among my covered neighbours.” Two simple rules unlock most of the board.

• If a number equals the count of its covered neighbours, they are all mines. A “3” touching exactly three covered squares means all three are mines — flag them.
• If a number already has that many flagged mines around it, its other covered neighbours are all safe. A “1” with one flag beside it means every other neighbour can be revealed — this is exactly when to chord.

Almost all of Minesweeper is the repeated application of those two ideas. You find a number whose situation is forced, act on it, and the new information you reveal makes the next number forced too. A cleared board is a chain of these small certainties.

A worked opening: from first click to first deductions

Say you open Beginner and click near the middle. Because the first click is safe, a blank region flood-opens, leaving a ragged border of numbers around it. Now the reasoning begins:

1. You spot a 1 at the edge of the open area that touches just one covered square. That single covered square must be the mine — flag it.
2. Next to it sits another 1 that also touches that same flagged square and nothing else covered. Its mine is already accounted for, so all of its other neighbours are safe. Chord it to open them.
3. Those newly opened squares reveal fresh numbers, which in turn touch new covered squares, and the chain continues.

Almost every Beginner and Intermediate board can be unravelled this way — find the forced move, act, and let the reveal hand you the next forced move. You rarely need to guess when you scan patiently for the square that logic has already decided.

Why blank areas open on their own

When you reveal a square with zero adjacent mines, the game automatically opens all of its neighbours too, and keeps cascading outward through every connected zero-square until it reaches the bordering numbers. This flood-open is what gives you that satisfying burst of cleared board on a lucky first click, and it saves you from clicking through dozens of obviously safe blank squares by hand. Under the hood it is handled efficiently without recursion, so even a huge cascade on the Expert board opens instantly and never stutters. Practically, it means your job is only ever to reason about the numbered border between open and covered territory — the empty interior takes care of itself.

Intermediate patterns

Beyond the two core rules, a handful of recurring shapes let you read squares that look ambiguous at first glance. Learning them is the single biggest jump in skill.

The 1-1 pattern

Two adjacent 1’s running along the edge of an opened area often force a specific safe square. Because both 1’s frequently share the same single mine, the square just past them is commonly safe. Recognising this saves you from guessing along long walls.

The 1-2-1 pattern

A row of numbers reading 1-2-1 along the border of covered squares resolves to a fixed arrangement: mines under the outer 1’s and safe squares in between. Once you have seen it a few times you will spot it instantly and clear it without hesitation.

Counting with the total

Late in a game, the mines-remaining counter becomes a deduction tool in its own right. If only one mine is left and a single number still demands one, every other covered square on the board is safe. Using the global count together with local numbers cracks endgames that local logic alone cannot.

Our blog has a dedicated walkthrough of these shapes in Minesweeper patterns every player should know, with worked examples of each.

Understanding mine density across the levels

The feel of each level comes down to how tightly the mines are packed. Beginner spreads 10 mines across 81 squares, so open space is plentiful and forced moves are easy to find. Intermediate raises the pressure with 40 mines over 256 squares, and you will more often need to chain two or three deductions before a square is certain. Expert packs 99 mines into 480 squares, which means longer stretches of border to read and, occasionally, genuinely tight spots where several numbers must be balanced against each other at once. Knowing this helps you set expectations: on Beginner you should almost never guess, while on Expert your goal is to postpone any forced guess for as long as possible and let deductions carry you.

Advanced strategy: efficient, confident play

• Open aggressively where it is forced. When logic proves a square safe, reveal it without hesitation. Confidence in your deductions is what lets you clear a board quickly.
• Flag only when it helps. Many fast players flag sparingly, marking mines mainly to enable a chord rather than for their own sake. Flagging every mine is tidy but slower; flag the ones that unlock a chord.
• Work the frontier. The action is always along the boundary between revealed and covered squares. Scan that frontier for forced numbers rather than staring at the interior.
• Leave true guesses for last. Sometimes a board offers no certain move and a small chance-based decision is unavoidable. Exhaust every logical deduction first, then, if you must, choose the square that keeps the most of the board solvable afterward. Delaying a guess often means new information arrives that removes the need for it.
• Chain your reveals. After each reveal, immediately re-read the numbers that just changed situation. One reveal frequently forces the next, and stringing them together is how experts clear a field in a fraction of the time.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

• Clicking before you have read the numbers. Most mine hits are impatience, not bad luck. Pause and check whether the square is actually proven safe.
• Miscounting a number’s neighbours. Corner and edge squares have fewer than eight neighbours; count only the squares that actually exist around the number.
• Chording too early. Chording only reveals safely when your flags exactly match the number. A misplaced flag turns a chord into a disaster, so be sure a flag is correct before you rely on it.
• Over-flagging. Flagging squares you have not actually proven wastes time and can mislead a later chord. Only flag what the logic confirms.
• Guessing when logic remains. Before taking any chance-based square, sweep the whole frontier again — the certain move is often hiding one number over.

Scoring: the timer and your best time

Minesweeper is scored by speed. The clock starts on your first reveal and stops the instant you clear the field. Each difficulty keeps its own best time, so Beginner, Intermediate and Expert are three separate records to chase. Improving your best is about deduction speed, not frantic clicking — recognising forced numbers on sight, chording instead of clicking one square at a time, and never pausing to second-guess a move you have already proven. All times are stored locally on your device; there is no account and nothing is sent to a server, so your records are yours and reset only if you clear your browser data.

Is Minesweeper gambling?

No. Minesweeper is a free logic puzzle. There is no money involved, nothing to purchase, and no chance-based reward of any kind. The board is generated randomly and the first click is made safe precisely so that the game is about deduction rather than fortune. Yes, a rare board can force a genuine guess when no certain move exists — but that is a solvability quirk, not a game of chance for money, and nothing of value is ever risked or won. Your result comes from how well you read the numbers, and the only thing on the line is your own best time.

Accessibility

We built Minesweeper to be playable without a mouse and without relying on colour:

• Numbers are always shown as digits. Each adjacency count is drawn as its actual number, so the coloured styling is a helpful extra, never the only cue.
• Full keyboard play. Arrow keys move a clear focus outline, Enter reveals or chords, and F flags — the entire game is reachable from the keyboard.
• Screen-reader labels. The board is marked up as a grid, and every square announces its state and position — “hidden”, “flag”, “empty”, a number, or “mine” — with its row and column, so a non-visual player can build the same mental picture.
• Reduced motion. If your system requests reduced motion, the small press animations are disabled while play is unchanged.

Tips for phones and older devices

• Master the long-press early. On touch, a firm long-press flags and a quick tap reveals. Getting the timing into your fingers prevents accidental reveals on squares you meant to flag.
• Start on Beginner on a small screen. The larger boards are wide; Beginner keeps every square a comfortable tap target. On Expert, the board scrolls sideways so you can still reach every column.
• The cells resize to fit. The game sizes its squares to your screen and re-fits if you rotate the device, so you rarely need to zoom.
• It runs light. Even large boards are handled efficiently — the open-up of blank areas is computed without recursion, so a big Expert cascade never stutters — and the game loads fast with no heavy assets.
• Your best times are saved locally. A flaky connection never costs you a record, because nothing depends on the network once the game has loaded.

Frequently asked questions

Can I really never lose on the first click?

Correct — the mines are placed only after your first reveal, and your clicked square plus its neighbours are kept clear, so your opening move is always safe (on a board large enough to hold the full safe zone).

Do I have to flag every mine to win?

No. You win by revealing every safe square. Flags are a bookkeeping aid that also enable chording; when you clear the last safe square, the game auto-flags any mines you left unmarked.

What does clicking a number do?

If that number already has the matching count of flags around it, clicking it chords — it reveals all remaining unflagged neighbours at once. If the flags do not match, nothing happens, which protects you from an unsafe reveal.

Is there ever pure luck involved?

Occasionally a board reaches a spot with no certain move and a single guess is unavoidable, but this is rare and comes only after you have exhausted every deduction. The overwhelming majority of the game is solvable by logic alone.

Reading the number colours

Each adjacency number is drawn in its own colour to help you scan the board at a glance — 1 in blue, 2 in green, 3 in red, and so on up to 8 — but the digit itself is always printed, so the colour is only ever a helpful accelerant, never the sole cue. As you play more, the colours become a fast visual shorthand: a wall of blue 1s reads instantly as a low-danger stretch, while a cluster of reds and purples warns you that mines are packed tightly nearby. New players should read the digits and treat the colours as a bonus; experienced players lean on the colours to sweep the frontier more quickly, then confirm with the numbers before committing to a reveal or a chord.

More games to try

If you like turning clues into certainty, a few of our other puzzles will suit you. Tile Connect rewards spotting matches and tracing clear paths across a board. Word Guess is deduction in a different key — six tries to reason out a hidden five-letter word. And Memory Match trains the focused attention that also serves you well when reading a dense minefield.

A friendly closing word

Minesweeper looks nerve-wracking and is actually one of the most logical games there is. Read every number as the clue it is, apply the two core rules until the board gives you a chain of certainties, learn the handful of patterns that resolve the tricky spots, and lean on flagging and chording to move quickly. The first click is always safe, the game is free, and there is no chance-based reward at the end — only the clean satisfaction of a fully cleared field and a best time you are quietly proud of. Pick a level and start reading the numbers.