The classic Windows-era minesweeper: every number counts the mines in its eight neighbouring cells, and you use those clues to open every safe cell without detonating one. Three standard boards — easy 9×9 with 10 mines, medium 16×16 with 40, expert 30×16 with 99 — with a guaranteed-safe first click that always opens an area. Flag with right-click, long-press or flag mode, clear neighbours in one tap by chording, and your best time per difficulty is saved in the browser.
Mines are placed after your first click, avoiding that cell and its neighbours — no first-move luck deaths, and the game always starts with an open region.
Chording: click a revealed number whose neighbouring flags match it, and the remaining neighbours open at once. If a flag is wrong, you detonate — that is the risk of the move.
The mine counter shows mines minus flags, not the true remainder — misplaced flags can push it negative.
The timer starts on your first click, so studying the board costs nothing.
Minesweeper is a pattern game, not a luck game. Memorising a handful of shapes raises your level immediately.
1-2-1 along a wall: the mines sit above the two 1s, and the cell above the 2 is always safe — open it instantly.
1-2-2-1: the mines sit above the middle 2-2; the cells above the outer 1s are safe.
1-1 against an edge: once the first 1's constraint is resolved, the second 1's mine placement follows automatically. This is why experienced players work outward from walls and corners.
Handle certain deductions first; when a region stalls, move elsewhere — information from one area frequently unlocks another.
On expert boards genuine 50/50s exist — no logic resolves them. Before guessing, check two things.
Count remaining mines against remaining closed cells: when density is low, an open-field guess far from numbers is statistically safer than a border cell.
Postpone the 50/50. Solving other regions first sometimes produces a number that resolves it for free; guess only when nothing else remains.
For speed, flag less: top players run "no flag" (NF) style, tracking mines mentally and clicking only safe cells, saving one click per mine.
If you do flag, chord aggressively — flag exactly the number's count, then click the number to open everything else at once.
The timer starts at your first click, so surveying the whole board beforehand is free.
Mine-hunting games date back to mainframe titles of the 1960s–70s, but the game went global when Microsoft shipped Minesweeper with Windows 3.1 in 1992 (first appearing in 1990) — partly, famously, to teach mouse skills.
The easy/medium/expert board standard — 9×9/10, 16×16/40, 30×16/99 — was set there, and this page uses the same configuration.
Deciding whether an arbitrary minesweeper board is consistent was proven NP-complete (Richard Kaye, 2000) — a deceptively deep game.
The first click places mines avoiding the clicked cell and its neighbours (or just the cell when the board is too dense), so a region always opens.
Hitting a mine reveals every mine on the board — seeing where you were wrong is how the next game improves.
Best times live only in your browser's localStorage; nothing is sent to a server, and the game works offline once loaded.
A number counts the mines in the up-to-eight cells touching it, corners included. If a "1" touches exactly one unopened cell, that cell is a mine. The entire game unfolds logically from this single rule.
No. Mines are placed after your first click and avoid both the clicked cell and its eight neighbours, so the game always opens with a safe region.
Right-click on desktop, long-press on mobile, or turn on flag mode so every tap plants a flag — handy for one-handed play.
Clicking an already-revealed number when exactly that many flags sit around it: all remaining neighbours open in one action. It roughly halves your clicks, but a wrong flag means detonation.
Easy is 9×9 with 10 mines (12.3% density), medium 16×16 with 40 (15.6%), expert 30×16 with 99 (20.6%) — the same configuration as the original Windows Minesweeper.