How to Play Minesweeper: Rules, Numbers and First Moves

Minesweeper looks like a guessing game for about thirty seconds. Then the numbers start making sense, and it turns into what it really is: a logic puzzle in which almost every move can be worked out. This guide covers how to play Minesweeper from the first click: the goal, the three standard boards, what the numbers mean, flagging and chording, whether the first click is safe, and the handful of patterns that clear most of a beginner board without a single guess.

The goal of Minesweeper

You are given a rectangular grid of covered cells. Some of them hide mines; you know how many, but not where. Your job is to uncover every cell that does not hide a mine. Uncover a mine and the game is over.

What makes it solvable is that every safe cell you uncover tells you something. It shows a number: how many of the cells touching it are mines. Put enough of those numbers together and the mines give themselves away. That is the whole game, and everything below is detail.

The board: Beginner, Intermediate and Expert

Almost every version of Minesweeper offers the same three presets, inherited from the Windows game. They differ in size and, more importantly, in how tightly the mines are packed:

Older Windows releases used an 8 × 8 Beginner board with the same 10 mines, so you may still meet that size. Most versions also have a custom setting where you choose the width, height and mine count yourself.

The last column is why Expert is so much harder than its size suggests. At one mine in five cells, the numbers are bigger, openings are smaller, and you run into positions where the numbers genuinely cannot tell you the answer far more often.

What the numbers mean in Minesweeper

A number on an uncovered cell is the count of mines in the eight cells that touch it: the two beside it, the three above and the three below, diagonals included. A cell on an edge has five neighbours and a corner cell only three, but the rule is the same.

• 1 to 8 — that many mines among the neighbours. An 8 is possible but rare: it needs a cell completely surrounded by mines.
• A blank cell is a zero: none of its neighbours is a mine. Because they are all safe, the game uncovers them for you, and if any of those are blank too, it keeps going. That chain reaction is what opens up a large empty region, usually called an opening, from a single click.
• The colours are just for reading speed. In the classic Windows palette 1 is blue, 2 green, 3 red, 4 dark blue, 5 maroon, 6 teal, 7 black and 8 grey, and many versions keep it.

A number never tells you which neighbours are mines, only how many. The skill of Minesweeper is combining neighbouring numbers until only one arrangement fits.

How to play Minesweeper, step by step

1. Pick a level. Start on Beginner. Everything you learn there carries straight up to the bigger boards.
2. Click any cell. On most versions the first click cannot be a mine (more on that below). With luck it lands on a blank and opens a region of the board.
3. Read the edge of the opening. The numbers along the border between uncovered and covered cells are your clues. Look for a number whose mines are forced — a 1 that touches only one covered cell, for example.
4. Flag the mines you are sure of. Right-click a covered cell to plant a flag on it. A flag is a note to yourself, and it stops you uncovering that cell by accident.
5. Uncover the cells you have proven safe. Once a number has all its mines flagged, every other covered cell around it is safe.
6. Repeat until every safe cell is uncovered. The timer stops, and you have won.

Controls: revealing, flagging and chording

Revealing a cell

Left-click (or tap) a covered cell to uncover it. If it is safe you see a number or a blank; if it is a mine, the game ends.

Flagging a mine

Right-click a covered cell to mark it with a flag. The mine counter in the corner shows the total number of mines minus the flags you have placed. It trusts you completely, so a wrong flag makes the counter wrong too. Many versions also let you right-click a second time for a question mark, a softer "maybe" marker, and a third time to clear it. On phones, flagging is usually a long press or a flag/dig switch on screen, depending on the app.

Chording

Chording is the move that makes experienced players fast. When a number already has as many flags around it as its value, you can uncover all of its remaining covered neighbours at once. In the classic Windows game you press both mouse buttons together on the number, or the middle button; many newer versions do it when you simply click the number.

Chording is only as good as your flags. If one of them is wrong, the chord uncovers a real mine and ends the game, so flag with care before you rely on it.

Is the first click in Minesweeper always safe?

Usually, but it depends on the version. The classic Windows game made sure your first click was never a mine, by moving a mine out of the way if one was there. Many modern versions go further and guarantee that the first click lands on a blank, so you always start with an opening. A few versions make no promise at all.

Either way, where you click first matters less than people think. Corners and edges have fewer neighbours, so a click there is a little more likely to be a blank and less likely to open anything large. The centre is the opposite. Most players simply click near the middle and get on with it.

How you win and how you lose

You win when every cell that is not a mine has been uncovered. You do not need to flag the mines to win; flags are only there to help you. Many versions flag the remaining mines for you at the end and record your time.

You lose the moment you uncover a mine, whether by a click or a chord. The board then reveals every mine, and many versions mark any flag you placed on a safe cell, so you can see where your reasoning went wrong. The smiley face above the classic board starts a new game.

Your first Minesweeper patterns

Solving technique deserves a guide of its own, but a few rules clear most of a Beginner board, and they are worth knowing from your first game.

The two basic deductions

• All covered neighbours are mines when a number equals the count of covered cells around it. A 2 touching exactly two covered cells: flag both.
• All other neighbours are safe when a number already has that many flags around it. A 1 with one flag next to it: everything else around it is safe, which is exactly when you chord.

The 1-1 against a wall

Picture a row of numbers running along a straight edge of covered cells. If a 1 sits at the end, touching only two covered cells, its mine is in one of those two. The next 1 along touches those same two cells plus one more. Its single mine is already accounted for, so that third cell is safe.

The 1-2-1

Three numbers in a row, 1-2-1, against a flat line of covered cells, has only one solution: the mines sit opposite the two 1s, and the cell opposite the 2 is safe. The reasoning takes a moment. If the cell opposite the 2 were a mine, it would be the only mine for both 1s, and then the 2 could never reach two. The cousin pattern 1-2-2-1 works the same way, with the two mines opposite the two 2s.

When you have to guess

Sometimes the numbers really do allow two arrangements, most often a pair of cells where either could be the mine. In the classic game that is bad luck, not a mistake, and Expert produces it more often than the smaller boards. Before guessing, check whether the remaining-mine counter settles it, and uncover everything else first. Some versions, such as Simon Tatham's Mines, only deal boards that can be finished by deduction alone.

A short history of Minesweeper

The game most people know is Microsoft Minesweeper, created by Curt Johnson and brought to Windows by Robert Donner. It first appeared in Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1 in 1990 and became part of the standard Windows install with Windows 3.1 in 1992, which is how it reached so many office desks. The idea is older than that. Mined-Out, a 1983 ZX Spectrum game by Ian Andrew, is often named as an ancestor, and grid games about hidden mines circulated before it.

Windows Vista added a "Flower Garden" theme as an alternative to the mines. Windows 8 dropped the game from the default install, and Microsoft published it as a free app in its store instead. Minesweeper also has a place in mathematics: a 2000 paper in The Mathematical Intelligencer showed that deciding whether a Minesweeper position is consistent is NP-complete, which puts the humble desktop game in the same class as some of the hardest problems in computer science.

Minesweeper without the numbers: mines games on Gift Club

Gift Club is a games app inside Telegram, and its mines games borrow Minesweeper's board but not its puzzle. That difference matters, so here it is plainly: there are no number clues. Opening a safe tile tells you nothing about its neighbours, every covered tile is as likely as any other to hide a mine, and there is nothing to deduce. They are risk games, not logic puzzles.

• PvP Minefield is the head-to-head one. Same board, no numbers, pure nerve against another player: two players share one 5 × 5 board with 3 mines and take turns opening a tile, with 10 seconds a turn; miss the clock and a random tile is opened for you. A safe tile passes the turn. Whoever opens a mine first loses, and the other player takes both stakes less a 5% cut. Stakes run from 5 to 100 Stars, and you start a match by sending a friend a challenge link in Telegram or by playing a bot.
• Minefield is the solo version: the same 5 × 5 board with 3, 5 or 10 mines depending on the difficulty. Each safe tile raises a multiplier, you can cash out after any of them, and a mine ends the round. You play for Stars, at stakes from 5 to 100, or in a free mode that pays XP instead.

In both, the mine positions are fixed by a committed seed before the first tap and can be checked afterwards; provably fair verification explains how. And because there are no numbers, the Minesweeper patterns above do not carry over: no tile is safer than another, and none is "due" either, which is the gambler's fallacy talking. What little strategy the no-numbers game has is in mines strategy, and the mines calculator works out the odds for any board.

If what you love about Minesweeper is the deduction, these are a different kind of game and you should know that going in. If what you love is the moment before a tile turns over, they are that moment on its own, and PvP Minefield puts someone across the board from you.

Try the game from this article

PvP Minefield

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Common questions

What do the numbers mean in Minesweeper?

Each number is the count of mines in the eight cells touching it, diagonals included. A blank cell means zero, which is why the game opens its neighbours for you automatically.

How does Minesweeper work?

The mines are placed when the game starts (in many versions, just after your first click, to keep it safe). Every safe cell you uncover shows how many mines are next to it, and you use those counts to work out which covered cells are safe to open and which to flag.

Do you have to flag every mine to win?

No. You win by uncovering every safe cell. Flags are an aid, and many fast players skip them entirely on easy positions.

What is chording in Minesweeper?

Uncovering all the unflagged neighbours of a number at once, once the number has as many flags around it as its value. It is done with both mouse buttons or the middle button in classic Windows, or by clicking the number in many newer versions.

Is Minesweeper just luck?

Mostly not. The large majority of moves on a standard board can be deduced from the numbers. Luck comes in at the first click and at the occasional position where two arrangements fit the numbers equally well.

What are the Minesweeper board sizes?

Beginner is 9 × 9 with 10 mines (8 × 8 in older versions), Intermediate 16 × 16 with 40, and Expert 30 × 16 with 99. Most versions add a custom size.

Is Minesweeper still on Windows?

Not as part of the default install since Windows 8. Microsoft offers it as a free app in its store, and countless other versions run in a browser or on a phone.

Keep reading

• Minefield — the Gift Club mines game — difficulties, the multiplier ladder and when cashing out makes sense.
• PvP Minefield — the one-board, two-player version.
• Mines strategy — what does and does not work when the board has no numbers.
• 1v1 games online — more games built for two players.
• Every Gift Club game guide