Minesweeper

How to play Minesweeper

1. Pick Classic for a quick field, Campaign for the coached fields and stars, or Daily field for today's shared board.
2. Open a square. In Classic any first square is safe; in the campaign and daily field, start on the marked square.
3. Read each number as the count of mines in the eight squares touching it.
4. Flag squares that must be mines with a right-click, a long hold on a phone, or the Dig/Flag switch.
5. Open a number whose flags match it to clear all its other neighbours at once (a chord). Check your flags first.
6. Open every safe square to win. Use Hint when stuck, and the face or New field for another board.

Controls

About Minesweeper

Minesweeper is a quiet test of deduction dressed as a small desktop utility. The field begins as rows of raised gray squares with mines hidden under some of them. Open a square and it shows either a number or an empty patch; empty patches spread by themselves until numbers surround them. A number tells you exactly how many of the eight touching squares hold mines, diagonals included. Open every safe square and the field is cleared. Open a mine and the attempt ends, with every other mine revealed so you can see what you missed.

This version checks its fields before you see them. When you pick your first square, the game places mines around it and runs a solver that knows only what a player could know: the opened numbers, mines it has already proven and the mine counter. It uses three human rules. A number with all its mines found makes its other neighbours safe. A number with exactly as many covered neighbours as missing mines makes them all mines. Two nearby numbers can be compared when one must put its mines where it overlaps the other. If the solver gets stuck, the layout is repaired and checked again from the beginning. Only a field it can clear completely is dealt, so you never face a forced guess.

Classic play offers the three sizes players know: Beginner at nine by nine with ten mines, Intermediate at sixteen by sixteen with forty, and Expert at thirty by sixteen with ninety-nine. Custom fields run from five by five up to thirty by twenty-four. Certified fields keep mines under about a quarter of the squares; switch to luck fields for the traditional random board, where the first square is safe but the ending may come down to a guess. Records are kept separately for certified and luck play.

The campaign turns the rules into a journey of twenty-four fixed fields, each opening from a marked square. Training Yard starts with a six by six field and a coach who highlights the numbers that prove the next move, then teaches flags and chords. Garden Plots bends the edges into rings, crosses, a diamond, twin plots joined by a path, terraces and a keyhole, where squares beside a wall have fewer neighbours. Fuse Works adds a counter that burns down: clear the field before it reaches zero. Deep Survey brings long, dense fields and finishes on the full expert board. One star is for clearing a field, the second for clearing it without hints or rewinds, and the third for a bonus goal such as a par time, no flags at all, or clicks no higher than the field needs.

The daily field is the same certified board for everyone on a given day, with a shape that changes through the week, from a compact Monday plot to a wide Saturday survey. Clear it on consecutive days to build a streak. Your first clean time is kept for the day; replays still count toward the streak but never overwrite it. A copy button shares a plain text result without any account.

Hints explain instead of simply acting. Press Hint and the game highlights the number or pair of numbers that prove a step, marks the squares it has proven safe in green or as mines in red, and says why in a sentence. Press Do it to make that move. The hint never trusts your flags, so if one of them is wrong it tells you which. Opening a mine offers a Rewind that undoes only that move. Both hints and rewinds mark the attempt as assisted: it still counts as cleared, but not for records or the second and third stars.

The presentation keeps the look of a nineties desktop window: bevelled tiles, colored pixel numerals, red seven-segment counters with faintly glowing unlit segments and a face that winces while you press, sleeps while paused and puts on sunglasses when you win. Openings ripple outward, flags drop into place, a loss sets off a chain of little explosions and a win raises flags across the field. Five themes are included; Midnight is ready from the start and three more unlock with campaign stars. Sound effects are generated in the browser, and motion is reduced when your system asks for it.

Progress stays in this browser: the unfinished field, stars, daily streak, settings and statistics for every size, including games played and won, the longest win streak, the best time and the fastest solve measured in 3BV per second (3BV is the number of clicks a field needs without flags). There is no account or online leaderboard, and if storage is blocked the game still plays and says that progress cannot be saved.

A few useful tricks

• Start from the edge of the first opening: numbers there have the fewest covered neighbours.
• A 1 touching exactly one covered square is always that mine; a satisfied number frees all its other neighbours.
• When one number is not enough, compare it with its neighbour: shared squares often decide the rest.
• Watch the mine counter near the end. It can settle the last few squares on its own.
• Chording saves clicks for the efficiency star, but only after the flags around the number are right.

Good questions