How to play minesweeper
The rules fit in three lines. The skill is in reading them quickly. This page covers the rules, the controls on phone and desktop, and what the game guarantees you on the first tap.
The rules in three lines
1. Every revealed number counts the mines in the eight tiles touching it, diagonals included. This 3 has found all three of its mines; the one below-right counts just the same as the ones straight above and below.
2. Use the numbers to prove which hidden tiles are safe and which are mines. Three 1s above a row: the middle tile is the only one all three can see, so it is the mine, and the outer two are safe. Reveal the safe ones, flag the mine.
3. Reveal every safe tile to win. Flags are not required to finish; only the safe tiles have to be opened. Reveal a mine and the operation ends, with the option to retry the same board or start a new one.
That is the whole game. Everything on this page is detail: how the controls work, what the first tap guarantees, and what the HUD is telling you.
Controls
| Action | Phone | Desktop and browser |
|---|---|---|
| Reveal a tile | Tap | Click |
| Flag a mine | Hold the tile | Right-click, or hold |
| Question mark | Hold a flagged tile again | Right-click a flagged tile again |
| Clear around a number | Tap a revealed number whose flags add up | Click a revealed number whose flags add up |
| Pan and zoom | Drag with one finger, pinch to zoom | Drag, or use the zoom slider |
The bottom-left TAP ACTION switch changes what a short tap does: sweep, flag or mark. Arm the flag when you have a run of proven mines to plant and you want to tap them rather than hold each one. The MINES counter in the top right falls by one for every flag you place, so it reads as "mines still unaccounted for" rather than a fixed total.
The first tap is always safe
You cannot lose on the first move. The game places mines after you tap, keeps the tapped tile clear, and opens a small safe zone around it so you have numbers to work from. On most boards the first tap also sets off a cascade.
A cascade happens when you reveal a tile with no adjacent mines, a zero. Zeros have nothing to warn you about, so the game opens every connected zero automatically and stops at the first ring of numbers. Starting in open water, away from land, is the fastest way to get a big opening. On a strait board, "open water" means the middle of a channel rather than a cove.
Flags mean certainty, not guesses
This matters more than it sounds. Flags feed the clear-around-a-number move: once the flags touching a number equal that number, tapping the number reveals every other tile around it. One wrong flag turns that shortcut into a detonation. Keep flags honest and the shortcut becomes the fastest way to sweep a board.
Reading the board
After subtracting proven flags, a number that needs exactly as many mines as it has unflagged hidden neighbours has found all its mines. Here the middle 1 touches one hidden tile, so that tile is a mine. The 1s either side also touch it, which is why they are 1 and not 0: they are already satisfied. Any other hidden tile touching those 1s is safe.
Most of minesweeper is repeating that read: find a number that is already fully explained, flag what it proves, reveal what it clears, and let the new numbers open the next read. The strategy page covers the named patterns that let you skip steps.
Difficulty and board size
Difficulty sets mine density. Board size is separate: the same density on a bigger board simply means more of everything.
| Difficulty | Mine density | Small Hands, Small Grid (115 tiles) | Hormuz Closed (891 tiles) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 10% | 12 mines | 89 mines |
| Medium | 15% | 17 | 134 |
| Hard | 20% | 23 | 178 |
| Veteran | 21% cap | 24 | 187 |
These are the browser demo’s current counts. Its no-guess rule caps Veteran at 21% mines, rounded down. This is a generation and difficulty setting, not a mathematical limit. How no-guess works.
What the HUD shows
- Top left: difficulty and board name.
- Top middle: the clock. It starts on your first tap and freezes if you use a hint or resume a saved board, so a hinted time is never a record.
- Top right: mines left to flag, and the percentage of safe tiles swept.
- Bottom left: TAP ACTION, the question-mark toggle, and HINT, which costs XP and reveals one proven-safe tile.
- Bottom right: zoom, settings, and RETRY.
Try it
All four strait boards run free in your browser on the home page, from 115 tiles to 891, nothing to install. The full game adds classic rectangles, puzzles, daily challenges and ranks, on Google Play and the App Store for iPhone and iPad.
Play a board now