The field guide / fair openings
No-guess minesweeper
A board checked for a path you can solve with logic.
What does no-guess mean?
An ordinary random board can force a 50/50. A no-guess board has a route from its opening to every safe tile using deductions. You can still lose to a wrong move or a misplaced flag.
Tap. Check. Sweep.
- Choose your opening. The game prepares the mine layout around that tap.
- The solver checks it. It uses revealed clues and deductions to test whether the safe tiles can be cleared.
- Play the checked board. Find a pattern, reveal what is safe, and repeat.
Why Veteran stops at 21%
The browser demo caps its strait boards at 21% mines, rounded down. That means 24 mines on Small Hands and 187 on Hormuz Closed. The cap balances generation time and difficulty; it is a design choice, not a mathematical limit on minesweeper.
Stuck does not always mean guessing.
Subtract proven flags from the numbers. Check overlapping groups and the whole-board mine count. A 1–2–1 can hide inside a 2–3–2. The visual pattern guide shows how.
No-guess does not mean every tile is decidable immediately. A useful clue may be on another part of the board.
Try it on the coastline.
Land changes which tiles touch a number, but diagonals still count. Start with Small Hands, then work up to Hormuz Closed.
Play a board