Minesweeper — Free Online Logic Puzzle

How to Play Minesweeper

A Minesweeper board is a rectangle of covered squares with mines hidden underneath a fixed number of them. Dig a square and one of two things happens: it detonates and the game is over, or it shows a number telling you exactly how many of its eight surrounding squares hold mines. A square with no adjacent mines shows nothing at all and automatically opens its neighbours, which is why a lucky opening click can clear a third of the grid in one go. Your job is to open every square that is not a mine — you never have to dig the mines themselves, and flagging them is a bookkeeping aid rather than a scoring move.

On this board the first click is always safe. Mines are placed only after you dig, and they are kept off both your chosen square and all eight of its neighbours, so an opening move always breaks the board open instead of ending the game on move one. The timer starts on that first dig, and your best time is saved separately for each difficulty on your own device.

Controls

• Dig: left-click or tap a covered square.
• Flag: right-click on desktop, or long-press for about half a second on touch. You can also press the Dig / Flag button to switch modes and then tap normally — handy on a phone.
• Chord: in solo mode, click a number that already has exactly that many flags around it to open all its remaining neighbours in one action.
• Restart: the ↻ button in the header, or Play Again on the results card. Changing mode or difficulty also deals a fresh board.

The three boards

Easy is 9 × 9 with 10 mines — about 12% density, forgiving enough to finish on logic alone. Medium is 16 × 16 with 40 mines at roughly 16% density, the standard "intermediate" board and the one most speed records are set on. Hard is 16 × 30 with 99 mines at just over 20% density; on a phone it is wider than the screen, so the grid scrolls sideways inside its own frame while the page itself stays put.

Strategies & Tips

Open a corner, not the middle

Corners and edges touch fewer squares, so the numbers there constrain far more tightly — a 1 on an edge has five neighbours instead of eight. Many strong players open a corner precisely because the resulting numbers are easier to solve, and because the automatic cascade from a zero tends to run along the edge and unwrap a large region.

The two patterns that solve most boards

Almost every deduction reduces to two shapes. Count satisfied: if a number already touches that many flags, every other neighbour is safe — dig them all. Count exhausted: if a number's covered neighbours equal the number itself, every one of them is a mine — flag them all. Sweep the frontier applying those two rules in turn and the board usually unravels without any guessing at all.

Learn the 1-2-1 and 1-2-2-1 walls

Along a straight wall of covered squares, the sequence 1-2-1 always means mine-safe-mine under the 1s and the middle, and 1-2-2-1 always means safe-mine-mine-safe. These two patterns appear constantly on Medium and Hard. Recognising them instantly, rather than re-deriving them each time, is the single biggest jump most players make.

Subtract overlapping numbers

When two numbers share covered squares, subtract one from the other. If a 2 and a 1 overlap on two squares and the 2 has one extra square of its own, that extra square must be a mine. This "set subtraction" is how you break positions that neither simple rule can touch, and it is the reason experts rarely have to guess before the endgame.

Use the mine counter as a clue

The counter shows mines minus flags, not mines remaining, so it only helps if your flags are honest. Late in a board it becomes decisive: when the counter matches the number of covered squares left, all of them are mines, and when it hits zero every remaining covered square is safe and can be swept in seconds.

Chord aggressively — but only on numbers you trust

Chording is worth more time than any other habit, because it turns a completed number into a single click instead of five. The catch is that it opens everything not flagged, so one misplaced flag detonates instantly. Chord freely in the open middle of the board where your flags came from clean deductions, and slow down at the frontier where a flag was a hunch.

When you truly must guess, guess cheaply

Some boards end in a genuine coin flip, and no amount of staring changes it. When that happens, pick the square with the best odds rather than the most interesting one — an edge square adjacent to a low number, typically — and prefer a guess that opens new information over one that only resolves a single square. Guessing early is a mistake; guessing last, on the cheapest square available, is just correct play.

2-Player Pass-and-Play

Switch Mode to 2 Players and the same minefield becomes a hotseat duel on one device. Players alternate, revealing exactly one square each turn. A safe reveal scores one point for every square it uncovers, so triggering a big cascade from a zero is worth a fortune while nibbling at a known 1 earns you a single point. Flags are free and do not use your turn, which means you can mark the board for yourself between digs.

Hitting a mine ends the game immediately and that player loses outright, no matter how far ahead they were. If the whole board is cleared instead, the higher score wins. The tension is entirely in that trade-off: the fat unexplored regions pay the most and are also where the unknown mines live, so a player who is behind is forced to gamble while the leader can safely chip away at squares the numbers have already proven. Names are optional — leave them blank for P1 and P2 — and they are remembered on your device for next time.