Defuse the grid in Minesweeper
Tap to reveal · long-press or flag mode to mark a mine.
Minesweeper is the timeless deduction puzzle: reveal squares one by one, use the number clues to figure out where the hidden mines are, and flag them all without detonating a single one. Pure logic, zero luck once you read the board right.
How to play
Minesweeper in 4 steps
Reveal a square
Click any square to uncover it. The first click is always safe — it never hides a mine.
Read the numbers
A revealed number tells you how many mines touch that square (including diagonals). A blank means zero, so neighbours auto-open.
Flag the mines
When logic proves a square is a mine, flag it (right-click or toggle flag mode) so you don't click it by accident.
Clear the board
Reveal every safe square — or flag every mine — to win. Hit a mine and the round ends.
Controls
- Click / Tap
- Reveal a square
- Right-click / Long-press
- Place or remove a flag
- Flag toggle button
- Switch taps between reveal and flag (handy on mobile)
- R
- Start a new game
Strategy
Tips to play better
Start in the open
Click near the centre to open a big blank region. Edges and corners give you fewer clues to work with early on.
Count the ones
A "1" already touching one flagged mine means all its other neighbours are safe — open them with confidence.
Use subtraction
Compare two adjacent numbers. If a "2" and a "1" share squares, the difference often pinpoints exactly where a mine must be.
Flag, then chord
Once a number is fully satisfied by flags, you can safely clear its remaining neighbours in one sweep.
About Minesweeper
Minesweeper traces back to mainframe games of the 1960s and 70s, but it became a household name when Microsoft bundled it with Windows 3.1 in 1992. For a generation of office workers it was the game, a quiet five-minute exercise in pure logic between tasks.
What makes Minesweeper endure is that it rewards reasoning over reflexes. Every number is a small constraint-satisfaction problem, and an expert can chain those constraints into long, mine-free sweeps that feel like solving an equation. Beyond the easy boards, optimal play is genuinely hard — Minesweeper is provably NP-complete.
Our Unicode version uses crisp glyphs for flags ⚑, mines ✸ and the colour-coded numbers, so the board is sharp on every screen and instantly playable. Choose Beginner, Intermediate or Expert, and your best clear time for each is saved locally in your browser.
FAQ
Minesweeper questions
Can the first click ever be a mine?
What do the numbers mean?
How do I flag a mine on mobile?
Is there a way to win every game?
Is it free and ad-free?
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