How to play Minesweeper

Minesweeper is a deduction game: the numbers tell you exactly where the mines are — if you know how to listen. Here are the rules, the controls, and the patterns that clear boards without a single guess.

The rules

• The board hides a fixed number of mines (shown by the 🚩 counter).
• Digging a safe cell reveals a number: how many mines sit in its 8 surrounding cells. Blank cells have zero and open their whole neighborhood.
• Digging a mine ends the game — though here you can always retry the same board.
• You win by revealing every safe cell. Flagging mines is optional but makes deduction much easier.

Controls

• Tap / click digs a cell. Your first dig is always safe.
• Right-click (desktop) or long-press (touch) plants a flag. Or switch to the 🚩 Flag tool and tap.
• Chording: tap a revealed number that already has all its flags placed — its remaining neighbors open at once. This is the biggest speed-up in the game.

Core deductions

1. Tight fit → all mines. If a number equals its count of covered neighbors, every one of them is a mine. Flag them.
2. Satisfied → all safe. If a number already touches that many flags, every other neighbor is safe. Chord it.
3. The 1-1 pattern. Two 1s side by side against a wall of covered cells: the first 1's mine must be in the cells it shares with the second — so any cell the second sees beyond the shared ones is safe.
4. The 1-2 pattern. A 1 and a 2 side by side along an edge: the 2 needs two mines but shares at most one with the 1 — the far cell of the 2 is always a mine.
5. Endgame counting. When the 🚩 counter equals the number of covered cells, they're all mines; when it reads 0, everything left is safe.

A worked example

Suppose a revealed "2" touches exactly two covered cells — both are mines, flag them. A neighboring "3" touches those two flags plus one more covered cell: 3 − 2 = 1, so that last cell is also a mine. A "1" behind it now touches a flagged mine, so all of its other covered neighbors are safe — chord it and the board opens up. Chains like this are the whole game: every flag you prove feeds the next number.

Common mistakes

• Guessing early. On these boards there is always a logical move — if you're stuck, scan for tight fits and satisfied numbers you've missed, or use a Hint.
• Over-flagging. A wrong flag poisons every number that touches it and leads to false "satisfied" chords. Only flag what you've proven.
• Ignoring the mine counter. In the endgame the global count often finishes the board when local numbers can't.
• Forgetting diagonals. Numbers count all 8 neighbors — corner-to-corner contacts included.

Frequently asked questions

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