This is an original browser version of the mine-clearing logic puzzle. The board is 9 columns wide; open a square and it tells you how many of the eight squares around it hold mines. Chain those numbers together and the mines can be deduced one square at a time. Three things here differ from the usual implementation. First, every board is checked by a solver before it reaches you, so a run **never requires a guess** — being stuck means something on the board has not been read yet, not that luck ran out. Second, the first square you tap, and the whole ring around it, are guaranteed clear, so the opening always blows a patch open and a run cannot end on tap one. Third, flagging is not a long press: two keys sit in the bottom-left corner, one marked dig and one marked flag, and the one pressed in is the one your taps mean. Naming both actions rather than hiding one behind a toggle is what makes the phone version stop misfiring — and on a desktop the right button flags without touching either key. Hitting a mine ends the run, but every run carries one undo, and the price of using it is the time bonus. The five board sizes are 7 rows with 8 mines, 9 rows with 13, 11 rows with 20, 13 rows with 24, and 16 rows with 30; the column count never changes, so a taller board grows downward rather than sideways and every square stays at or above the 36px floor a uniform grid is allowed.

The shared machine at the back of the school computer room, ten minutes between classes, and whoever got there first opened the little grid of grey squares. The first click was pure luck, and a bad one ended it before it started. Then one day it clicked: that 1 has exactly one covered square next to it, so that square is a mine — no need to try it. That is the real lesson a lot of us took away from this game, and it was never about mines: you are allowed to work it out before you move.

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【电】 School and home computers · 1993–2003 →

1. 01

   Tap the board once to start. The next tap is your opening: that square and the ring around it hold no mines, so it always opens a patch.

2. 02

   Read the numbers. A square marked with a number has that many mines among its eight neighbours; the row of pips above the digit says the same thing, and counting pips beats reading colour.

3. 03

   Two keys sit in the bottom-left: dig and flag. Press flag and every tap plants one instead of opening, and tapping the same square again lifts it. On a keyboard, f moves between them; on a desktop, the right button flags without leaving dig mode.

4. 04

   When a number already has all its flags, tap the number itself and the rest of its neighbours open together. It is the fastest way to finish a board, and it trusts your flags rather than the truth.

5. 05

   On a keyboard, the arrow keys or W, A, S and D move the cursor and space or enter acts on it. Esc or P pauses.

6. 06

   The three keys along the top are pause, sound and reduced flashing, reachable at any time. The pause panel holds the rules and all five board sizes.

Work the border, not the board. Everything deducible lives where an open digit touches a covered square; the open middle of the board tells you nothing. The workhorse rule: if a digit has exactly as many covered neighbours as its number, all of them are mines. Turn it around — once its flags are complete, every remaining covered neighbour is safe. Read two digits together. When one digit's covered neighbours are a subset of another's, the difference between the two numbers is the mine count in the squares that are left over: a difference of 0 makes them all safe, a difference equal to their count makes them all mines. Reading a pair that way breaks most of the positions that look stuck. Count the total near the end. If the covered squares left equal the mines left, they are all mines; if the mines left have reached 0, everything remaining is safe. Tap a satisfied digit to sweep it. It is the only move that opens several squares at once, and it is far faster than picking them off — but it acts on your flags, so a misplaced one detonates on the spot. Save the undo. The time bonus is worth up to 600 and using the undo fixes it at zero, and an undo spent on move two costs exactly as much as one spent at the finish. Chase the clock, not the board. Clearing a board always pays the same square score, whoever does it, so the time bonus is the only axis on which two clean runs can differ.

How do you play minesweeper, and what do the numbers mean?

Open a square; if it is not a mine it turns over and shows how many of the eight squares around it — diagonals included — hold mines, from 1 to 8. A square with no mines nearby shows no digit and opens its whole connected patch at once. Your job is to chain those numbers together until every mine is located. This version also prints that many pips above each digit, so the exact number is countable rather than a colour you have to recognise.

What happens if you hit a mine on the first click in minesweeper?

It cannot happen here. The mines are laid at the instant you tap the first square, and that square plus the ring around it are excluded, so the opening always cascades, at least 4 squares come up, and the score goes from 0 to positive on that tap. That is not luck — it is the rule. An opening that fails to cascade would be a bug.

Is there a minesweeper that never makes you guess?

This one. After the mines are placed at random, the layout has to pass a solver, and only boards that can be reasoned through from the opening square are handed out; the rest are thrown away and redrawn. The solver uses three deductions — one digit on its own, two digits whose neighbours overlap, and the remaining mine total — and does no probability or enumeration at all, which makes it strictly weaker than a strong player. Anything it can solve, you can solve.

How do you flag mines in minesweeper on a phone without a long press?

There is no long press here. Two keys sit side by side in the bottom-left, one marked dig and one marked flag, and the pressed-in one is what your taps mean — press flag and every tap plants or lifts a flag, press dig and you are opening again. Naming both beats a single toggle, which only ever shows one of the two states and leaves you guessing which. The board's outer frame switches from a thin solid line to a thick dashed one and every covered square grows a small corner tag at the same moment, so the current mode is visible in three places rather than remembered. On a keyboard, f moves between the keys; on a desktop, the right button flags a square without changing the mode at all.

What does clicking a number in minesweeper do?

When the flags around that number add up to it, tapping the number opens every remaining neighbour that is neither flagged nor already open. It is the only move that opens several squares at once and the fastest way to close out a board. It acts on your flags rather than on the truth, though: a flag in the wrong place turns a real mine over and the run ends there. When the flag count does not match, tapping the number does nothing at all, and costs nothing.

Do you have to restart a minesweeper game after hitting a mine?

Not the first time. Every run carries one undo, offered on the results sheet: take it and you are back at the moment before the mine, with that mine flagged for you, free to finish the board. The price is that the run's time bonus is fixed at zero for whatever is left of the run — and that bonus starts at 600, so an undo taken early can cost more than every square you go on to open. The allowance is one per run rather than one per death, so a second mine after an undo comes with no button.

How many difficulty levels does minesweeper have and how long is a game?

Five boards: 7 rows with 8 mines, 9 rows with 13, 11 rows with 20, 13 rows with 24, and 16 rows with 30. The column count is fixed at 9, so the squares stay the same size on all five — the taller boards shrink them a little, never past the 36px floor — and the precision asked of your thumb never changes: difficulty is carried by rows and mines alone. Easy is a between-classes run, mid is a short sit-down, expert is the long haul. The expert board is the ceiling: there is no sixth size, no custom board and no endless mode. Switch size from the pause panel or the results sheet, and the switch starts a fresh run.

How is minesweeper scored and how do you get a high score?

Each safe square is 10 points, every square of a cascade included. Flagging and unflagging score nothing, so filling the board with flags is not a way to farm points. Clearing adds a time bonus that starts at 600 and loses 5 per second, reaching zero at 120 seconds. The square score has a ceiling, and on a given board it is the same ceiling for everyone, so the clock is the only place two clean runs can differ. A run that used its undo scores no time bonus at all.