Minesweeper FAQ

Minesweeper is a single-player logic puzzle played on a grid of covered squares. A set number of squares hide mines. Every safe square you open shows how many mines touch it, and you use those numbers to work out where the mines are. You win by opening every square that is not a mine. The puzzle was popularised by the version bundled with Microsoft Windows from 1990 onward; Minesweeper Classic is a free, modern implementation of the same rules.

Yes. Minesweeper Classic is completely free and runs entirely in your browser. There is nothing to buy, download, or install, and there is no account, no paywall, and no video ad interrupting a board. Open the page and the grid is ready.

No. Minesweeper Classic is a 100% browser-based game built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It loads in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and other modern browsers on desktop and mobile with no plugin, app store listing, or installer.

Grid-based mine-finding games date to the 1960s and 1970s mainframe era, with titles like "Cube" and "Mined-Out" (1983) as direct ancestors. The version most people mean was written by Robert Donner and Curt Johnson and shipped in Microsoft’s Windows Entertainment Pack in 1990, then bundled with Windows 3.1 in 1992. Minesweeper Classic is an independent reimplementation of that ruleset.

Yes. It is a single-player logic puzzle with no chat, no user-generated content, no graphic imagery, and no purchases. The "mines" are abstract markers on a grid. It works well as a quiet mental break for a wide age range.

Click a covered square to open it. A number tells you how many mines are in the eight squares around it; a blank square touches no mines and opens its neighbours automatically. When the numbers prove a square is a mine, flag it with a right click or long-press. Keep making deductions until every safe square is open. You never have to open a mine to win — opening one ends the game.

No. Minesweeper Classic places its mines only after your first click, and it keeps that square and all of its neighbours mine-free, so the opening move always reveals an area to work from. This first-click safety is the modern standard and applies on Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert alike.

A number on an opened square is the exact count of mines in the up-to-eight squares surrounding it. A 1 touches one mine, a 3 touches three, and so on. An opened square with no number is touching zero mines, which is why the board cascades open around it until it reaches numbered squares.

Chording is opening every remaining neighbour of a number in a single click, allowed only when the number already has that many flags around it. On Minesweeper Classic you chord with a normal left click on the satisfied number. It is the fastest way to clear open ground — but if any of those flags is wrong, chording opens a mine.

No. The win condition is simply that every non-mine square is open. Flags are a tool for your own bookkeeping and for enabling chording; you can win a board with no flags placed at all. On a win, Minesweeper Classic flags the remaining mines for you so the finished board looks tidy.

You opened a square touching zero mines. Blank squares have no number, and the game automatically opens every neighbour of a blank square — which often chains through a large connected region of blanks and the numbered squares bordering it. It is expected behaviour and usually a good thing: it hands you a lot of numbers at once.

The game ends immediately. The mine you hit is highlighted, every other mine on the board is revealed, and any flags you placed on safe squares are marked as mistakes. The timer stops. Press the status button (or R on a keyboard) to start a fresh board at the same size.

Yes. The counter shows the number of mines minus the number of flags you have placed, so if you place more flags than there are mines it drops below zero. That is a signal that at least one of your flags is wrong.

Stop guessing when a deduction exists. Most losses are solvable boards where a resolving number was a few squares away from where the player was looking. Learn the common edge patterns (1-1, 1-2-1, 1-2-2-1) so they resolve on sight, practise subset counting between overlapping numbers, and use the mine counter in the endgame. Speed comes from chording satisfied numbers rather than opening squares one at a time.

Not always. A standard random board can produce a position where two or more squares are equally likely to be a mine and no number resolves them — a forced 50/50. Minesweeper Classic uses classic random boards, so a small number of games will come down to one guess. Good play is about removing every avoidable guess first.

Three: Beginner (9×9 grid, 10 mines), Intermediate (16×16 grid, 40 mines), and Expert (16×30 grid, 99 mines). These are the standard sizes used by desktop and online Minesweeper for decades. Beginner is selected by default and fits a phone screen; you can switch size from the control above the board.

Along a straight edge of the opened area, three consecutive numbers reading 1-2-1 mean the squares beneath the two 1s are mines and the square beneath the 2 is safe. It is one of a handful of shapes that resolve with no arithmetic once you recognise them; 1-1 and 1-2-2-1 are the other common ones.

Flagging is worth it for two reasons: it prevents an accidental click, and it lets you chord satisfied numbers to clear ground quickly. Speed-focused players sometimes skip flags on open areas and flag only where it enables a chord. Either way, only ever flag a square a number has proven.

Time is just the clock. Efficiency measures how few clicks you used relative to the minimum the board requires (its 3BV). A player can have a slow time with perfect efficiency, or a fast time with wasteful clicking. Minesweeper Classic records your time; efficiency is a way experienced players push times lower by chording and opening blanks smartly.

Yes. Your fastest win for each board size, along with games played, games won, and your current and best win streaks, are saved locally in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server and there is no login. Because the record lives on the device, a different phone, a new browser profile, or cleared site data will look like a fresh start.

Yes. Tap a square to open it and long-press to flag, or switch on flag mode below the board so every tap places a flag. Beginner fits a phone screen without scrolling; Intermediate and Expert pan within their frame so the cells stay large enough to tap accurately.

Use a two-finger tap or tap-in-the-corner on the trackpad, whichever your operating system maps to right click. Alternatively use keyboard control: move the cursor with the arrow keys and press F to flag. On touchscreens, long-press or the flag-mode toggle both work.

Minesweeper Classic is a browser game and needs a connection to load the page the first time. After that, some browsers keep the tab playable without a network connection, but there is no dedicated offline app or install package.

Best times are stored only in the browser you played in. They are lost if you clear cookies or site data for the site, switch browsers or devices, or play in a private window that has since closed. Some privacy tools and phone "lite" modes also wipe local storage. Because the record never left your browser, it cannot be recovered from our side.

Open the stats panel from the board, choose Reset, and confirm with the second tap. That clears best times, games played, wins, and streaks for all three board sizes on this browser. It cannot be undone.