How to Play Minesweeper

How does Minesweeper work?

Minesweeper hides mines under a grid of squares. Opening a safe square shows a number: how many of its eight neighbors contain mines. Use those numbers to prove where mines must be, flag them, and open every square that must be safe. You win when all safe squares are open.

What do the numbers mean in Minesweeper?

Each number counts mines in its eight neighboring squares. Corners have three neighbors and edges have five. The number includes diagonals, so a mine does not need to share a side with the clue. A blank square has zero neighboring mines and opens its safe neighbors automatically.

Flags are deductions, not discoveries

Place a flag only when the clues prove a mine must be there. The game does not verify individual flags for you. If a 1 touches exactly one covered square, flag it. If that 1 already touches a flag, its other covered neighbors are safe only if your flag is correct.

A safe first move

Your first click is protected, together with its immediate neighbors. Mines are placed after that click, which gives you an opening to reason from. This does not guarantee that an ordinary random board can be finished without guessing. Choose No Guess Minesweeper for a verified logical path.

Opening several squares at once

Chording reveals the unflagged neighbors of a number when the adjacent flag count matches the clue. Double-click the number, tap it on a phone, or focus it and press D. Count matching is necessary, but your flags must also be in the correct places.

Mistakes almost everyone makes

Do not interpret a 2 as two mines somewhere in the same row; both must touch that specific square. Do not treat every covered square beside a large number as a mine. And do not copy a pattern without checking its edges: an extra covered neighbor can change the conclusion. The Minesweeper patterns page shows each common shape with the edges that make it valid.

A first game, from opening to finish

Choose Beginner and open a square near the middle. A patch of blank squares usually spreads out, leaving numbers around its edge. Stop there for a moment. You do not have to click rapidly, and the timer is not a deadline. Pick just one small number at the boundary between revealed and covered squares. Count its covered neighbors, including the diagonals. If you cannot explain a move from that number, move your attention to another clue instead of clicking an arbitrary neighbor.

Your immediate goal is one justified move. That move may expose another number, which gives you a new question to answer. A finished board is a chain of these small decisions. Use the pause button if you need a break; it hides the board and stops the clock. Resume returns you to the same position.

Count a neighborhood without losing your place

Imagine a three-by-three window centered on the number you are reading. The center is the clue itself, so it does not count as a neighboring square. The other eight positions are the possible locations of the mines it describes. At the left edge, the window extends beyond the board, and those missing positions simply do not exist. Never wrap around to the right side of the next row when counting.

A mine can belong to several neighborhoods at once. If two nearby clues both say 1, they may be counting the same mine. This is why adding all the visible numbers does not give the total mine count. In step two of the interactive lesson, select the center clue to see the eight surrounding squares highlighted.

Worked example: one remaining covered square

Suppose a revealed 1 touches one covered square, and all its other neighbors have been revealed. The number needs exactly one mine. There is only one possible place for it, so flag that covered square. This is a deduction, not a guess based on how likely the square looks. The same rule works for a 2 touching exactly two covered squares: both must contain mines, provided there are no other adjacent flags to account for.

Now add a flag beside that 2. If the flag is a confirmed mine, the clue needs only one more mine. Recount the remaining covered neighbors using the reduced number. Forgetting to subtract flags is a common reason an apparently obvious move turns out to be wrong.

Worked example: a number that is already satisfied

A 1 has a confirmed flag immediately above it and two covered neighbors to its right. Because the flag accounts for the one mine, both right-hand squares are safe. You may reveal them individually or chord the 1. The important condition is that the flag is correct. Matching the number of flags to the number on the clue does not check the locations for you.

If those two new squares show numbers, read their neighborhoods separately. A newly exposed 2 may touch the existing flag as well as other covered squares. Carry the same confirmed information forward. You do not need to remember a large chain of numbers: keep asking how many mines remain and how many places could hold them.

What the mine counter can and cannot tell you

The counter above the board subtracts your flags from the total number of mines. It is a bookkeeping aid, not a score for correct reasoning. If you flag a safe square, the counter still decreases. A zero counter means you have placed as many flags as there are mines; it does not by itself prove that every flag is in the right place.

Near the end, the total can provide an additional constraint. If there is one unflagged mine left and one covered square left, that square must contain it, assuming the other flags are correct. If there are several disconnected unknown areas, the remaining total applies to all of them together. Avoid spending all the remaining mines in one area without checking the others.

Flags, question marks, and touch controls

On a computer, right-click a covered square to flag it. Right-click again to remove the flag. If you enable question marks in Settings, the cycle becomes flag, question mark, then covered. A question mark is only a reminder; it is not treated as a confirmed mine. Do not use a tentative flag where an ordinary note would be more accurate, because later deductions and the solver treat flags as mine claims.

On a phone, hold a square briefly to flag it, or turn on Flag mode and tap. Check the ON indicator before making the next move: in Flag mode, taps mark squares instead of revealing them. Drag a large board to inspect another part of it. Choose a larger square size if precision matters more than seeing the whole board at once.

Your first comparison between two clues

Consider a left-edge 1 whose only covered neighbors are A and B. The next 1 touches A, B, and one extra square C. The first clue proves that A and B contain one mine between them. The second clue also allows only one mine in its whole neighborhood. Therefore C is safe. You have learned something useful without knowing whether A or B is the mine.

Change the second clue to a 2 while keeping the same covered neighborhoods. Now A and B still contribute exactly one mine, but the second clue requires two. C must supply the extra mine. These are the 1-1 and 1-2 comparisons. Their strength comes from the shared squares, not merely from seeing those digits beside each other. Practice both in the pattern guide.

When a move really is a guess

Sometimes two covered squares are interchangeable: placing the mine in either one produces exactly the same revealed clues. A 1 touching only those two squares is a simple example. Looking harder at that local number cannot distinguish them. Before guessing, inspect the rest of the board and the total mine count; another clue may provide information you have overlooked.

If no such information exists, an ordinary random game can require a guess. Losing that move does not necessarily mean you missed a deduction. No Guess Minesweeper is useful while learning because accepted boards have a verified logical route. If you become stuck there, check your flags, scan another frontier, or ask for a hint. A hint explains its conclusion, and the resulting game is recorded as assisted.

Recover from a mistake and learn one thing

After a loss, the exploded square marks the mine you opened and an incorrect flag is marked separately. Revisit the last clue you used. Did you forget a diagonal neighbor? Did a flag represent a guess rather than a certainty? Did you apply a familiar pattern even though an extra covered square touched one of its clues? Finding one specific error is more useful than deciding that you need to play faster.

Restart when you are ready. The new board is a different puzzle, so do not reuse the positions of mines from the previous game. Restarting an active game counts as an abandoned game in local statistics. If you are only experimenting with rules, focus on the explanation rather than the win rate; the scorebook is a record of your practice, not a judgment of your ability.

Finish the lesson and choose your next practice

The last lesson gives you a real Beginner game in No Guess mode. Use the earlier steps as a checklist: read the whole neighborhood, subtract confirmed flags, reveal satisfied neighbors, and compare overlapping clues. The lesson finishes when you win. You can skip to independent practice, and your current lesson step is saved in this browser if you reload.

Next, try the ten Minesweeper patterns and rotate the examples. Rotation changes where the clues appear but preserves which squares touch each other. The ten-question quiz asks for a safe square, a mine, or an undetermined conclusion and saves your result locally. When you want to investigate a particular game, use Analyze this board to transfer its visible clues to the Minesweeper solver. It cannot see hidden mines, so its explanations are based on the same information available to you.