How to play Minesweeper
The rules, your first moves and the techniques that solve any board without guessing.
Minesweeper takes neither luck nor fast hands — just attention. On this page: the rules, the two techniques that get you through most of a game, patterns for the tricky spots, and what to do when logic runs out. Every example is a real board from this site; under each one there is a link to play the board it was taken from.
the numbers that tell you a mine safe
Rules
The board is a grid of cells, and some of them hide mines. The goal is to open every cell that has no mine. An opened cell shows a number: how many mines there are among its eight neighbors — above, below, to the sides and diagonally. A cell with no number has no mines next to it; the game opens such cells together with their neighbors by itself.
When you find a mine, you mark it with a flag: right-click it, or long-press it on a phone. A flag doesn't open anything; it is a note for yourself. You win when every cell without a mine is open; you don't have to flag all the mines.
Getting started
The first click is always safe, and on this site it always opens up an area. From then on, the whole game happens along the edge of the opened area: the numbers there touch hidden cells, and those numbers tell you where the mines are.
Most moves are simple. On Intermediate, the first click opens a quarter of the safe cells on average, and of the rest, 96% are opened with the two one-number techniques; only 4% require comparing two numbers. On Expert it is 93% and 7%. That is what two thousand boards of each size show.
Two techniques with one number
Both techniques come down to the same question: how many mines a number is still missing, and how many hidden cells it has left.
All mines found
If a number already has as many flags next to it as it shows, all its mines have been found. The other hidden cells around it are safe, and you can open them.
As many hidden cells as mines
And the other way round: if a number has exactly as many hidden cells next to it as the mines it shows, all of them are mines.
These two steps, repeated over and over, solve almost the whole board. Every cell you open gives you a new number, and every flag brings some number closer to “all mines found”. After each move, check the numbers next to it.
Flags and chording
Flags are your memory: without them, you have to work out again every time which mines you have already found. They also make the game faster. Clicking a number that already has as many flags around it as it shows opens all its other neighbors at once; this is called a chord. Clicking with both mouse buttons, or with the middle button, does the same.
If a flag is in the wrong place, such a click opens a mine, so only place a flag where a mine is proven. Players who go for speed often don't use flags at all, but it is better to learn with them.
Reducing a number
Flags change what a number means for the rest of its cells. A 2 that already has a flag next to it works as a 1; a 3 with one flag works as a 2. Many spots that look hard become one of the two techniques above, or one of the patterns below, after such a reduction.
Two-number patterns
When no number tells you anything on its own, compare neighboring ones. They share hidden cells, and what one number knows about those cells helps the other. All the patterns below are the same idea, but they are worth recognizing at a glance: they come up in every game. The numbers in the patterns are counted after reduction: a 2 with a flag next to it counts as a 1 here.
1-1
A 1 against a “wall” sees two hidden cells, and one of them is a mine. The neighboring 1 sees the same two cells and one more. Its only mine is already among the first two, so the third cell is safe. The wall can be the edge of the board or opened cells.
1-2
A 2 next to a 1. The cells they share can hold at most one mine, because the 1 allows no more. So the second mine of the 2 is in a cell the 1 doesn't see. And the 1 already has its mine among the shared cells, so its own outer cell is safe.
1-2-1
Three numbers along a row of three hidden cells: the mines are opposite the 1s, and the cell opposite the 2 is safe. It is two 1-2 patterns put together.
1-2-2-1
Four numbers along a row of four hidden cells: the mines are opposite the 2s, and the cells opposite the 1s are safe.
The endgame: count the mines
The counter at the top shows how many mines are not flagged yet. At the end of a game it helps too. If all the mines are already flagged, every hidden cell is safe, even those no number touches. And if exactly as many hidden cells are left as there are mines, they are all mines. You won't need this often: in 2% of games on Intermediate and 6% on Expert.
When you have to guess
In classic Minesweeper the mines are placed at random, and sometimes logic runs out: you are left with cells that nothing lets you choose between.
- First make sure there really is no move. Go along the whole edge of the opened area once more: most often it is a 1 that became “full” after a flag and was missed.
- An unavoidable 50/50 is better settled early than late: if you are unlucky, you lose less time.
- Far from the numbers, the chance of a mine is roughly the number of mines left divided by the number of hidden cells. At the start of a game on Expert it is 21%; next to numbers the risk can be either higher or lower.
- Corner cells are more often blank and open up an area: they have only three neighbors.
Every board on this site is no-guessing, so it never comes to this: a program checks each board before you play it, and it can be solved with the techniques on this page alone.
Tips
- Don't guess: every board here is no-guessing. If it seems there is no move, there is one. Check your flags and go along the edge of the opened area again.
- Look at the numbers next to your last move. A new flag or an opened cell changes exactly those, and that is where the next step most often turns up.
- Look for 1s. A 1 with two or three hidden neighbors is the most common start of the 1-1 and 1-2 patterns.
- Use the hint to learn. It shows the next step and highlights the numbers it follows from. A game played with a hint doesn't count toward records, so there is no shame in it.
- Move up through the sizes step by step: Beginner, Apprentice, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Master. The bigger the board, the denser the mines and the more often two-number patterns come up.
- For speed, open cells by clicking a number instead of one at a time, and watch your 3BV/s after a win: it measures speed regardless of whether the board was easy or hard.