Beginner guide · Updated 20 August 2026
How to play Minesweeper
Minesweeper is a logic puzzle: uncover every safe square without opening a mine. The number on an opened square tells you how many mines touch it, including diagonally. Nothing else is hidden from you — everything you need to win is already on the board.
What you are actually trying to do
You win when every square that does not contain a mine has been opened. You do not have to flag anything, and you do not have to open the mines themselves — in fact opening one ends the game. The board never lies and never changes underneath you, so every safe square is either already provable or will become provable once you open more of the board.
That is the whole game. The skill is not reflexes or memory; it is noticing which counts on screen have only one possible explanation.
Your first click
Click anywhere to begin. In this game the first click is always safe — the mines are placed after you click, around wherever you landed — so there is no such thing as an unlucky opening move.
Open somewhere in the middle rather than a corner. A middle click is more likely to land in an empty region, and empty regions cascade: an opened square touching no mines automatically opens its neighbours, which opens theirs, and so on. One good first click can reveal a quarter of the board and hand you a long edge of numbers to work from. A corner click tends to give you a single number and nothing to compare it against.
Read the numbers
Every number counts the mines in the eight squares touching it — left, right, up, down and all four diagonals. A 1 touches exactly one mine. A 3 touches exactly three. An opened square showing nothing at all touches none, which is why it clears its whole neighbourhood for free.
Here the centre 1 has been opened. It touches eight squares, and exactly one of them hides a mine:
On its own that tells you very little — one mine among eight squares. Numbers become powerful when they overlap, because a square that two different numbers both describe has to satisfy both of them at once. Almost every deduction in Minesweeper comes from comparing neighbouring numbers, not from staring at one.
The two rules that solve most of a board
Nearly all beginner-level play reduces to two counting rules. Learn these and the board stops feeling like guesswork.
Rule 1 — if the count matches the hidden squares, they are all mines
Take any opened number. Count the hidden squares touching it. If that count equals the number itself, every one of those hidden squares is a mine, because there is no other way to reach the total.
This 1 touches only one hidden square, so that square is certainly a mine:
Rule 2 — if the mines are already flagged, the rest are safe
Take any opened number that already touches that many flags. Its remaining hidden neighbours cannot be mines — the number is fully accounted for — so all of them are safe to open.
This 1 already touches one flag, so its other hidden neighbour is safe:
Applying these two rules in turn — flag what must be a mine, open what must be safe, then look again — will carry you through the great majority of a Beginner board and a long way into a Medium one. Each square you open changes the counts around it, so a position that looked stuck often unlocks after a single new number appears.
Use flags carefully
A flag marks a square you believe is a mine. It is a note for your reasoning, not proof. Right-click a square to flag it, or press and hold on a touchscreen.
Flag only what you have actually proved. A flag placed on a hunch is worse than no flag at all, because Rule 2 will then tell you a dangerous square is safe, and chording will open it without asking. Most losses that feel unfair are really a wrong flag placed several moves earlier.
You are never required to flag. Strong players often flag less than beginners expect, placing them mainly where they unlock a chord or where the count is genuinely hard to hold in their head.
Chording, once you trust your flags
When a revealed number already touches as many flags as it shows, you can click that number itself to open all of its remaining hidden neighbours at once. This is called chording, and it is the biggest single speed gain available to a beginner.
In this game, chording is a plain click on an already-opened number. Flagging is right-click, or a long press on touch. There is also a flag-mode toggle if you would rather tap than hold.
Chording acts instantly and does not check your work — it trusts the flags. Use it freely on counts you have proved and avoid it anywhere you were unsure.
Patterns worth recognising
Some shapes recur so often that experienced players read them without counting. The most useful one for a beginner is 1-2-1 along a wall of hidden squares: the mines sit under the two 1s, and the square under the 2 is safe.
1-2-1 with hidden squares beneath — the outer two are mines, the middle is safe:
Its sibling 1-2-2-1 works the other way round: the mines sit under the two 2s. Both follow from the two counting rules — the pattern is just a shortcut for the arithmetic you would otherwise do each time. The Minesweeper master guide covers these and the probability work that follows them in much more depth.
When you genuinely have to guess
Most positions are solvable. A few are not: sometimes two arrangements both satisfy every visible number, and no amount of care will separate them. Recognising that quickly is a skill in itself, because the alternative is spending a minute re-checking a position that has no answer.
When you must guess, guess well. Prefer edges and corners, which touch fewer squares and so tend to carry lower risk. Compare the local odds — a hidden square beside a 1 with three hidden neighbours is a one-in-three risk, which is better than a coin flip elsewhere. And guess early rather than late: a wrong guess on move six costs you very little, while the same guess at the end costs the whole board.
Common beginner mistakes
- Reading a number as its own square. The number describes its neighbours, never itself.
- Forgetting diagonals. Every square has eight neighbours, not four. This is the single most common counting error.
- Flagging on suspicion. An unproved flag quietly corrupts every later deduction that depends on it.
- Working one number at a time. The information is in the overlap between adjacent numbers.
- Chording over uncertain flags. It opens everything at once, so it turns one wrong flag into an immediate loss.
- Grinding a stuck corner. Open elsewhere first. New numbers frequently resolve the corner for free.
Choosing a difficulty
Difficulty is set by how densely the mines are packed, not just by how large the board is. These are the three presets in the game on this site:
| Level | Board | Mines | Density | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 9 × 9 | 10 | about 12% | Room to breathe. Nearly always solvable without a guess. |
| Medium | 16 × 16 | 40 | about 16% | Numbers crowd each other; comparing neighbours starts to matter. |
| Hard | 24 × 24 | 99 | about 17% | Long walls of hidden squares and more positions that end in a real guess. |
Stay on Easy until you can finish it without opening a mine, not merely until you have finished it once. The jump to Medium is mostly about holding several partly-solved regions in mind at the same time, which is much easier when the counting itself has become automatic.
Questions people ask
Is the first click always safe?
In this game, yes — the mines are placed after your first click, so it can never land on one. Many modern versions do the same, but some older implementations do not guarantee it.
Do I have to flag every mine to win?
No. You win by opening every safe square. Flags are optional bookkeeping — useful for chording and for keeping track, but never required.
Does Minesweeper always require guessing?
No, though occasionally it does. Most boards are fully solvable by logic; a minority contain a position where two arrangements are equally consistent, and there the right play is to take the lowest-probability square.
What does a blank opened square mean?
It touches no mines at all. That is why it opens its neighbours automatically, and why a lucky first click can clear a large region in one move.
Why did I lose when all my flags were right?
Usually one flag was placed on a guess rather than a proof, and a later deduction — often a chord — relied on it. Retracing which number first justified that flag is the fastest way to find the error.
Practise
Try the free Minesweeper game with a safe first click and selectable difficulty. When the two counting rules feel automatic, move on to the Minesweeper master guide for pattern deduction, chord mechanics and probability. For a different grid-based logic challenge, see Open Knight's Tour.