How To Play Minesweeper

Minesweeper Rules

Minesweeper on Windows XP with 40 mines solved in 28 seconds

Minesweeper is a game where mines are hidden in a grid of squares. Safe squares have numbers telling you how many mines touch the square. You can use the number clues to solve the game by opening all of the safe squares. If you click on a mine you lose the game!

Windows Minesweeper always makes the first click safe. You open squares with the left mouse button and put flags on mines with the right mouse button. Pressing the right mouse button again changes your flag into a questionmark. When you open a square that does not touch any mines, it will be empty and the adjacent squares will automatically open in all directions until reaching squares that contain numbers. A common strategy for starting games is to randomly click until you get a big opening with lots of numbers.

If you flag all of the mines touching a number, chording on the number opens the remaining squares. Chording is when you press both mouse buttons at the same time. This can save you a lot of work! However, if you place the correct number of flags on the wrong squares, chording will explode the mines.

The three difficulty levels are Beginner (8x8 or 9x9 with 10 mines), Intermediate (16x16 with 40 mines) and Expert (30x16 with 99 mines). The game ends when all safe squares have been opened. A counter shows the number of mines without flags, and a clock shows your time in seconds. Minesweeper saves your best time for each difficulty level.

You also can play Custom games up to 30x24 with a minimum of 10 mines and maximum of (x-1)(y-1) mines.

Basic Patterns

When a number touches the same number of squares, those squares must be mines. Look at these examples:

The 1 on the corner touches 1 square so it must be a mine.

The 2 touches 2 squares so they must both be mines.

The 3 touches 3 squares so they must all be mines.

The 4 touches 4 squares so they must all be mines.

The 5 touches 5 squares so they must all be mines.

The 6 touches 6 squares so they must all be mines.

The 7 touches 7 squares so they must all be mines.

The 8 touches 8 squares so they must all be mines.

A simple trick is to press both buttons ("chord") on a number to depress (but not open) the squares it touches. This shows you how many squares are touching the number.

The pink 2 touches three squares and cannot be solved. The yellow 2 touches two squares and can be solved.

The pink 2 touches three squares and cannot be solved. The yellow 3 touches three squares and can be solved.

A common mistake is to see a "fake" 1 on a corner where the 1 already touches a mine.

The 1 in the corner is already touching a mine. The pink square is not a mine.

The 1 in the corner is already touching a mine. The pink square is not a mine.