Minesweeper

🕹️ How to play

1. Start a board: Pick beginner (9×9, 10 mines), intermediate (16×16, 40 mines) or expert (30×16, 99 mines). Mines are only placed after your first click, and never on that cell or the ring around it, so your opening click always clears an area and starts the clock instead of blowing up.
2. Read the numbers: A number on an open cell counts the mines in the 8 cells touching it, diagonals included. A blank cell has no mines around it at all, which is why it cascades open. Work the border between the open area and the covered cells — that edge is where the numbers actually pin mines down.
3. Flag the cells you are sure about: Flag a cell you know is a mine: long-press it for about half a second on mobile, or tap the Flag button below the board and then tap cells; on desktop, right-click. Flagged cells cannot be opened by accident. The counter at the top shows mines minus flags and may go negative.
4. Chord to open fast and clear the board: Double-click an open number when you have already flagged exactly that many mines around it: every remaining neighbour opens at once. This is called chording and it is where the speed comes from — though a wrong flag makes it detonate. Open every safe cell to win and see your time against your best.

📖 Rules & variants

Core rules: the board is a grid with a fixed number of mines hidden in it. Opening a safe cell shows how many mines touch it; a cell with no neighbouring mines shows nothing and cascades open automatically. Opening a mine ends the game. You win by opening every non-mine cell — you do not have to flag anything.

The three boards use the classic parameters rather than invented ones: beginner is 9×9 with 10 mines (about 12% density), intermediate 16×16 with 40 mines (about 16%), and expert 30 columns by 16 rows with 99 mines (about 21%). Higher density means fewer cells you can deduce with certainty, so expert is harder for more than just its size.

Safe first click: nothing is placed until you click, and then the mines are dealt around your click so that it and its whole 3×3 neighbourhood stay clear. That guarantees an opening cascade. You can switch this off in settings for the hardcore original behaviour, where the first click really can kill you.

Flags and chording: a flag is only your own marker — it never decides the outcome, and a wrong flag cannot lose the game on its own, it just gets crossed out in the post-mortem. Chording (double-click an open number whose flag count matches it) opens the rest of its neighbours in one move, and detonates if one of those flags was wrong. That risk is original behaviour and is kept.

Times and records: minesweeper is scored on time. Each difficulty tracks its own best time, games played, wins and current win streak. The clock starts on your first opened cell, stops and blurs the board when you pause or switch tabs, and resumes when you tap continue. Refreshing mid-game restores the exact same board, and everything is stored in your browser only — no account.

❓ FAQ