About Minesweeper
Minesweeper is a logic puzzle about uncovering every safe square in a field of hidden mines. Each number you reveal tells you how many mines touch that square, and from those numbers you work out where the mines must be. This version has three square boards and a guaranteed safe first click.
How to play
- There are three difficulty levels: Easy is 9 x 9 with 10 mines, Medium is 12 x 12 with 24 mines, and Hard is 16 x 16 with 48 mines. These differ from the classic Windows sizes.
- Mines are placed after your first click, and never on that square or any of its eight neighbours, so your first click always opens an area.
- A revealed number counts the mines in the up to eight squares around it, including diagonals. A square with no neighbouring mines opens all of its neighbours automatically.
- Revealing a mine ends the game and shows every mine on the board.
- You win when every square without a mine has been revealed. Flags are only reminders; you do not need to flag the mines to win.
- The timer starts on your first click. A win scores 50 points per mine minus the seconds taken (minimum 1), so Easy is worth up to 500, Medium up to 1200 and Hard up to 2400. A loss scores nothing.
Controls
- Mouse: left-click to reveal a square, right-click to place or remove a flag.
- Touch: tap to reveal, or press and hold for about half a second to flag.
- The flag button above the board switches flag mode on and off. While it is on, every tap or click places or removes a flag instead of revealing.
- The difficulty menu changes the board size and starts a new game.
Tips and strategy
- Start with the simplest patterns. A 1 with only one hidden neighbour means that neighbour is a mine; a 1 that already touches a flagged mine means all its other hidden neighbours are safe.
- Look for the 1-2-1 and 1-2-2-1 patterns along a straight edge. In a 1-2-1, the mines sit under the two 1s; in a 1-2-2-1, they sit under the two 2s.
- Flag mines as soon as you are sure of them. The Mines counter subtracts your flags, which helps you spot when only a few mines are left.
- Clicking a number does not auto-reveal its neighbours here, so reveal the safe squares one by one.
- Near the end, count the remaining mines against the hidden squares. Sometimes the total alone decides a spot that the local numbers cannot.
Background
Grid games about hidden mines existed in the early 1980s, but the version most people know is Microsoft Minesweeper, written by Robert Donner and Curt Johnson. It first shipped in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack in 1990 and was then included with Windows 3.1 in 1992, which put it on millions of office computers. The classic Windows boards were Beginner (9 x 9, 10 mines), Intermediate (16 x 16, 40 mines) and Expert (30 x 16, 99 mines).
Questions
- Will I ever have to guess?
- Sometimes. Your first click is always safe, but mines are placed at random, so a board can reach a point where the numbers do not decide which of two squares is safe.
- What happens if I flag a square that is not a mine?
- Nothing bad by itself, but a flagged square is never revealed, even by an automatic opening. You will need to remove the flag and reveal it to finish the board.
- Is the best score kept separately for each difficulty?
- No. One best score is stored for Minesweeper as a whole, in your browser's local storage. Because Hard is worth the most points, a good Hard result will usually be your best.