Minesweeper

What Minesweeper actually is

Minesweeper is not a guessing game, which is the single most common misunderstanding about it. It is a deduction puzzle with a small amount of unavoidable chance at the opening. Every number tells you exactly how many mines touch that square, and from a handful of numbers you can prove where mines are and prove where they are not.

It shipped with Windows for years and became, almost by accident, the most widely played logic puzzle in history. Most people who played it never learned the patterns and treated it as a coin flip, which is why it has a reputation for unfairness it does not deserve.

How to actually solve it

The core technique is counting. If a 1 touches exactly one unopened square, that square is a mine - flag it. If a 2 already touches two flags, every other square it touches is safe and can be opened. Almost the entire game is those two rules applied repeatedly.

The pattern worth learning by name is 1-2-1. Along a wall, a row reading 1-2-1 always resolves the same way: mines sit under the two 1s and the square under the 2 is safe. Once you recognise it you will see it in nearly every board.

Tips worth knowing

• Open a corner or an edge first. Edge squares touch fewer neighbours, so the information you get back is more constrained and more useful.
• Flag every mine you have proved. The flags are what let you count, and skipping them is what turns deduction back into guessing.
• Clicking a satisfied number opens all its remaining neighbours at once. It is much faster than clicking each square.
• When you genuinely have no safe move, guess in the largest open area rather than in a tight corner - it gives you more to work with if you survive.
• Beginner is 9x9 with 10 mines, Intermediate 16x16 with 40, Expert 30x16 with 99. Move up only once you stop losing.

Frequently asked questions

Is Minesweeper based on luck?

Mostly no. The first click is a guess and a small number of boards contain a genuinely unsolvable position, but the overwhelming majority of moves in a game are provable from the numbers on screen.

What does the number on a square mean?

It is the count of mines in the eight squares touching it. That single rule is the entire game.

What is the 1-2-1 pattern?

A row along a wall reading 1-2-1. Mines are always under the two 1s and the square under the 2 is always safe.

What are the three difficulty levels?

Beginner is a 9x9 grid with 10 mines, Intermediate is 16x16 with 40, and Expert is 30x16 with 99.

More games like this

our Minesweeper strategy guide, 2048, Chess. You can also browse the full games library or read the guides on the blog.