Minesweeper

Play Minesweeper free in your browser. Reveal tiles, flag hidden mines, and use number clues to clear the board without detonating a single mine. The classic logic puzzle game.

How to Play

1. Click any tile to reveal it. Numbers show how many mines are in the 8 surrounding tiles.
2. Right-click or long-press a tile to place a flag where you think a mine is hidden.
3. Use the number clues to deduce which tiles are safe and which contain mines.
4. Reveal all safe tiles without clicking on a mine to win the game.
5. The timer tracks how fast you can solve the puzzle — try to beat your best time.

Features

• Classic Minesweeper with the familiar grid-based puzzle format
• Real-time mine counter showing remaining unflagged mines
• Built-in timer to track your solving speed
• Satisfying cascade reveal when clicking empty areas
• One-click new game to start a fresh board instantly
• Chord-click revealed numbers to open their neighbours; per-difficulty best times
• Three interactive deduction exercises, plus a visible-clue hint that explains one locally provable move
• Review recorded board steps after a win or loss

Tips & Strategies

• The first reveal and its neighbouring tiles are mine-free, including at edges and corners. A central opening gives you borders to examine in more directions.
• When a number matches the count of correctly placed adjacent flags, the other adjacent tiles are safe. Incorrect flags make chording dangerous.
• Look for patterns: a '1' next to a single unrevealed tile means that tile is definitely a mine.
• Use flags liberally — marking known mines helps you see which remaining tiles are safe.
• If stuck, look for tiles where the numbers overlap and eliminate possibilities logically.
• When a number's flags match, click the number itself to sweep the rest.

Strategy Guide

Chording, the click that does half your work

On this board a chord is a plain left-click on a number that is already revealed. If exactly that many flags sit around the number, the click opens every remaining unflagged neighbour at once — up to several tiles for the price of one action. Why it matters: from the mid-game on, most of your clicks are reveals you have already proven safe, and chording collapses each cluster of them into a single click. That compression, repeated across the whole board, is where fast times actually come from. The catch is that a chord trusts your flags completely. If one flag is on the wrong square, the chord opens the tile you should have flagged — and the mine under it. So flag only what you have proven, never what you merely suspect, and chord a number the moment its flag count matches.

Two patterns worth memorising

The same local situations recur on almost every board, and re-deriving them from scratch each time is what quietly eats your clock. The two shapes below repay memorisation the most. To use them on a real board, first reduce the numbers: subtract from each number the flags already touching it, and what remains describes only the unknown tiles left. A 3 with two flagged neighbours behaves exactly like a 1, so a messy corner often collapses into one of these clean textbook forms. After reducing, scan along straight borders of unopened tiles — that is where these shapes live — and confirm the side condition that the numbers touch no other unknown squares before you apply the conclusion.

Openings, and how to guess when you must

Your first click here is more than safe — the whole three-by-three block around it is kept free of mines, so the opening click always lands on a zero and always cascades. That is why a central opening pays: the cleared region can spread in every direction and hands you one long connected border to reason about, instead of a cramped strip against a wall. Mine density rises from roughly 12% on Beginner (10 mines in 81 tiles) to roughly 20.6% on Expert (99 in 480), and with it the chance that pure logic cannot finish the board. When a true 50/50 appears, staring does not improve it. Take the guess immediately rather than saving it for last — a wrong guess early costs you seconds, while a wrong guess after clearing everything else costs the whole board.

About This Game

Minesweeper is the iconic logic puzzle that shipped on a generation of office computers. Numbered tiles tell you how many mines hide among their neighbours; from those clues you deduce which squares are safe and flag the ones that aren't. Reasoning solves many positions, but some boards still require a guess; a safe opening does not guarantee a logic-only solution. That blend of tension and deduction makes it an excellent deep-focus break, and a built-in timer turns each clear into a personal speed challenge worth chasing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do the numbers mean?

A number shows how many mines touch that tile across its eight neighbours. A '3' means exactly three of the surrounding squares are mined.

How do I flag a mine?

Right-click a tile on desktop, or long-press it on touchscreens. Flags mark suspected mines so you don't click them by accident.

Is the first click ever a mine?

No. The board is arranged so your opening click is always safe, which is why it usually reveals a large cleared area.

Is winning down to luck?

Many moves follow from the numbers, but some generated boards require a guess. The hint explains a move only when its local clue rules prove one; it does not guarantee a guess-free board.