About Minesweeper

Clear a grid without opening a mine. Every square you open shows how many of its eight neighbours are mined, and those numbers are the only information you get. A 1 touching exactly one unopened square names that square as the mine; a 2 whose two mines are already flagged means everything else around it is safe. String enough of those together and the board falls open.

Three sizes: 9x9 with ten mines, 16x16 with forty, and the full 30x16 expert board with ninety-nine. The difficulty is not the size but the mine density, which is why expert is a different game rather than a longer one — the safe deductions run out sooner and you spend more time working the edges of what you already know.

Every board here is checked before you see it. Ordinary minesweeper regularly reaches a position where two squares are equally likely and the only move is a coin flip; boards that need one are discarded and generated again, so a loss is always a mistake rather than bad luck. The daily board is the same for everyone, with a leaderboard for the fastest clear.

Tips to win

• Work the numbers against each other rather than one at a time: a 1 and a 2 sharing squares says more than either does alone
• Flag only what you have proved. A wrong flag is worse than none, because clearing around a number trusts it
• When a region stalls, count the mines you have left against the squares still closed — the last few usually fall out of that
• Open the edges and corners early: fewer neighbours means fewer possibilities to eliminate