MINESWEEPER 2.0

FIND THE MINES — NO-GUESS · DAILY · HEX · KNIGHT
W H MINES
BOARD RULES
MINES
10
TIME
0
BEST
3BV
N NEW · H HINT · F FLAG MODE · CLICK A NUMBER TO CHORD · LONG-PRESS TO FLAG

How to play Minesweeper

Left-click a cell to reveal it. Right-click (or long-press on touch, or switch on Flag Mode) to flag a suspected mine. Numbers show how many mines touch that cell. Reveal every safe cell to win — touch a mine and the field explodes. The first click is always safe and opens an area.

What's new in 2.0

No-Guess boards are generated with a solver in the loop, so logic alone always clears them. The Daily is one seeded no-guess board per day, identical for everyone, with streaks and a spoiler-free share line. Hex cells have six neighbours; Knight numbers count mines a knight's move away, which rewires every pattern you know. Share Board copies a link to the exact board you are on, so a friend can race your time. Hint highlights a provable move (or a wrong flag) for a 10-second penalty, and Guess Alert warns you in classic mode when only a guess remains. 3BV is the minimum-click score used for speed comparisons.

Tips

When the flags around a revealed number equal that number, click the number to chord and open its remaining neighbours. A "1" with a single unrevealed neighbour marks that neighbour as a mine. In classic mode about one Expert board in six is solvable without any guess; the other five will eventually put you in a 50/50 — that is what No-Guess mode removes.

About Minesweeper 2.0

Minesweeper is a single-player logic puzzle: uncover every safe cell on a grid without detonating any of the hidden mines. Numbers on revealed cells tell you exactly how many mines lie among the surrounding cells. It originated as a 1980s mainframe game and went worldwide when Microsoft bundled it with Windows 3.1 in 1992. This version keeps the classic three grids and adds the features the community has asked for ever since: guaranteed no-guess boards, a shared daily challenge, alternative geometries, seed sharing and honest speed metrics.

No-guess mode: how the boards are built

Classic Minesweeper places mines at random, so many boards end in a coin flip. In No-Guess mode the page runs a constraint solver on every candidate board: single-cell rules first, then the subset rule (if one number's unknown cells are contained in another's, the difference is determined), then exact enumeration of each connected frontier, and finally a global mine-count check in the endgame. Wherever the solver stalls, the mines it could not resolve are reshuffled and the solve is repeated. A board is only handed to you once the solver can clear it from the opened start cell, which means that every time you are stuck there is a deduction available. Generation takes a few milliseconds on Beginner and typically well under a tenth of a second on Expert. Measured over random classic boards, the same solver clears about 84% of Beginner, 72% of Intermediate and 16% of Expert boards without a guess, which is why the mode matters most on the large grid.

Daily challenge

Each UTC day produces one 16×16, 40-mine no-guess board from a fixed seed, so everyone plays the same puzzle. The start cell is pre-opened, the timer starts on your first click, and only your first attempt counts toward the streak; replays are for practice. The share line reports your time, the board's 3BV and your streak without giving away any of the layout.

Hex and Knight variants

BoardNeighbours countedWhat changes
Square8 surrounding cellsThe classic rules and all the familiar 1-2-1 and 1-1 patterns.
Hex6 adjacent hexagonsLower maximum number, fewer diagonal ambiguities, different edge patterns.
Knight8 cells a knight's move awayNumbers describe cells that are not adjacent; openings and cascades jump across the board.

All three variants share one engine: a variant is nothing more than a neighbourhood function and a layout, and the solver, no-guess generation, hints and 3BV are computed over that neighbourhood. Beginner, Intermediate, Expert and Custom sizes apply to every variant.

Standard difficulty grids

DifficultyGridMinesDensity
Beginner9×91012.3%
Intermediate16×164015.6%
Expert30×169920.6%
Customup to 60×40anyup to 45%

Number colors (classic Windows palette)

NumberColorAdjacent mines
1Blue1
2Green2
3Red3
4Purple4
5Orange5
6Cyan6
7Ivory7
8Gray8 (rare)

Frequently asked questions

What do the numbers mean?

The number on a revealed cell is exactly how many of its neighbouring cells contain a mine: 8 neighbours on a square grid, 6 on hex, and the 8 knight's-move cells in the Knight variant. A 0 (blank) means none, and the game opens its neighbours for you.

What is no-guess Minesweeper?

A board generated so that logic alone can clear it from the opened start. This page keeps reshuffling unresolved mines until its solver can finish the board, so you are never forced into a 50/50.

How does the daily challenge work?

One seeded 16×16 no-guess board per UTC day, the same for everyone. Your first attempt counts toward your streak; replays are practice. Share copies a spoiler-free result line.

What is 3BV?

Bechtel's Board Benchmark Value: the minimum number of clicks needed to clear the board, counting one per opening and one per numbered cell not touching an opening. 3BV per second compares speed fairly across boards of different difficulty.

What's a chord click?

Click a revealed number (or left+right together, or middle-click) to open all its unflagged neighbours at once — only when the flags around it equal the number. On touch, tap a number to chord.

How do I share a board?

After your first click the board is fixed. Share Board copies a link containing the seed, size, variant and start cell; whoever opens it gets the identical board with the same start cell already open.

Can every Minesweeper be solved without guessing?

Not in classic mode — roughly one Expert board in six is fully deducible from the first opening. Switch on No-Guess for a guarantee, or Guess Alert to be told the moment a classic board has no safe deduction left.

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Discussion

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