Minesweeper
Play classic Minesweeper with Beginner, Intermediate, Expert and custom boards, flags and a timer.
Ready — click any square to start.
- Mines left
- 10
- Squares opened
- 0
- Safe squares
- 71
- Time (seconds)
- 0
Right-click (or press F) to flag a suspected mine. Click a number that already has the right count of flags around it to open all its other neighbours — that shortcut is called chording.
How it works
Minesweeper hides a fixed number of mines in a grid. Opening a square shows how many of its up to eight touching squares contain a mine; a blank square (zero neighbouring mines) opens its neighbours automatically in a flood fill, which is what produces those big cleared areas. You win when every square that is not a mine has been opened — flagging is only a memory aid, so you never have to flag anything to finish a board. Open a mine and the game ends: the remaining mines are shown and any flag you put on a safe square is marked wrong.
The three presets are the classic ones: Beginner 9 × 9 with 10 mines,
Intermediate 16 × 16 with 40 mines and Expert 30 × 16 with
99 mines — plus a custom size up to 30 × 24. Mines are laid out after your first
click and never on the square you clicked, so the opening move is always safe. The layout
comes from a seeded generator: add ?seed=42 to the URL to replay the same board,
or use “Copy board link” to share an exact grid with ?board=… (dots are safe
squares, asterisks are mines, dashes separate rows). Everything — the grid, the timer and the
solver-free logic — runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded and there is no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How do you play Minesweeper?
Open squares one at a time. A number tells you how many of the up to eight touching squares hide a mine, and a blank square opens its neighbours automatically. Right-click (or press F) to flag a square you think is a mine. You win when every square that is not a mine is open — you never actually have to place a flag to finish.
Is the first click in Minesweeper always safe?
Yes on a generated board. The mines are laid out after your first click and never on the square you clicked, so the opening move can never end the game. A board opened from a shared ?board= link is fixed in advance, so on those the layout is exactly what the link says.
What is chording, and what are the standard board sizes?
Chording means clicking a number that already has the right count of flags around it to open all of its other neighbours at once. The classic sizes are Beginner 9 × 9 with 10 mines, Intermediate 16 × 16 with 40 mines and Expert 30 × 16 with 99 mines; you can also set any custom size up to 30 × 24.