Minesweeper
Free Minesweeper in your browser. Uncover squares, read the numbers, flag the mines without stepping on one. Three levels, and the first click is always safe.
- Free
- No ads
- No account
- No download
- Works offline
- Single player
How do you play?
- Pick a level - Easy, medium or hard. Choosing rebuilds the board from scratch.
- Click anywhere - The first square is safe and so are its neighbours. Open near the middle for a bigger reveal.
- Read the numbers - A number counts mines in the eight squares around it, diagonals included.
- Flag what you know - Long press, or the toggle beside the board. Flags come back off freely.
- Clear the board - When every safe square is open the clock stops and you find out about the record.
About this game
A covered board with mines under it. Your first click is safe, always. After that every number you uncover tells you how many mines touch it, and that is the entire information you get.
Here is the question nobody answers. How often have you lost a board that simply required a guess, and assumed you had missed something? We measured it. We built a solver that only ever makes moves it can prove, stops the instant it runs out of proof, and ran it over 2,000 boards per level. On easy, 79.8% of boards can be cleared by pure logic from first click to last square. Medium drops to 44.4%. Hard leaves 12.3%, which means seven boards in eight will eventually ask you to flip a coin. That is not you playing badly. That is 40 mines across 196 squares, and it does the same thing in every version of this game ever written.
Our solver knows two rules, the same two every player uses without naming them. A number whose mines are all accounted for, and the overlap between two numbers that reveals what sits in the difference. A stronger solver would crack a few more boards, so those percentages are a floor rather than a ceiling. That is the honest direction for them to be wrong in.
The record is a time, and the clock starts on your first click rather than when the page loads. Flags cost nothing and come back off, because a flag is a thought and not a commitment. Each level keeps its own record, since nine minutes on a 9x9 and nine minutes on a 14x14 are not the same achievement in any sense.
Three levels: 9x9 with 10 mines, 12x12 with 24, and 14x14 with 40. Density climbs from 12.3% to 16.7% to 20.4%, and nothing else changes. No hidden timer. No mines that move. The numbers never lie to you.
Everything saves on the device. No account, no password, which also means your phone and your tablet keep two separate records.
What does it teach?
Reasoning from partial information
No single number is ever enough. The answer always lives in two or three of them crossed against each other.
Certain against likely
The game constantly asks whether you know this or merely believe it. That question is useful a long way from the board.
Patience
A hard board takes minutes. Rushing is what kills you, every time.
Accepting luck
Sometimes no proven move exists and you have to pick. Losing is not always evidence that you were wrong.
Tips
Open in the middle
A corner square touches three neighbours. A middle one touches eight, so it opens several times as much ground for the same click.
Work the frontier
Almost every new deduction lives on the border between opened and covered. Scanning that edge finds moves that scanning the whole board misses.
Learn 1-2-1
Three numbers in a straight line along a wall always resolve the same way: mine, safe, mine. Spot it by eye and stop calculating it.
When nothing is provable
Guess from wherever has the fewest covered neighbours, usually a corner. You are not lowering the odds, you are lowering what a wrong answer takes with it.
What age is it for?
7 to 9
Easy, and sit with them the first time. The leap is understanding that a number talks about its neighbours.
10 to 12
Medium. This is the age where patterns replace recalculating every square.
13 and up
Hard. From here you are racing your own clock.
Adults
Under three minutes on hard is a genuinely good time. Worth remembering that 87.7% of boards at that level will make you guess at least once.
Accessibility
One tap to uncover, a long press or a dedicated toggle to flag, and no dragging anywhere. Squares stay finger-sized even on the hard board, which shrinks to fit the screen rather than overflowing it. Numbers are distinguished by their shape and not only by colour, so colour blindness does not affect reading them. Nothing flashes and nothing counts down from a click. You can play the whole game in silence without losing any information, and the clock runs without making a sound.
Playing together
One explains, one clicks
Whoever explains has to justify each move out loud before it happens. Fastest way to teach the game there is.
Call the guess
When you hit a position with no proof, stop and say so. Suddenly it is obvious the game has two separate halves.
Same level, two clocks
Take turns on the same difficulty and compare times. Different board, identical challenge.
Pattern hunt
Small prize for spotting a 1-2-1 before the other person. Everyone starts watching the frontier.
Common questions
Is Minesweeper free here?
Completely. Nothing to pay, nothing to buy inside the game, and no paid version with extra levels because there is no other version. Every game on the site is open from the first second.
Do I need to download or sign up?
Neither. It runs in the browser with no download and no account. We do not ask for an email either.
Can the first click hit a mine?
No. Mines are placed after you click, and the square you chose plus all its neighbours are excluded. That is why an opening click always reveals ground instead of ending the game.
Why are some boards impossible without guessing?
Mine density creates positions where two possibilities stay exactly balanced, and no amount of logic separates them. We measured how often: 79.8% of easy boards are solvable by pure logic against 12.3% of hard ones. The simulation is in our open source.
Are there ads?
None. No banners and no video between levels.
Does it work offline?
Yes. After one visit the game is stored on the device and runs on a plane.
How do I flag on a phone?
Long press a square, or use the toggle beside the board that switches between uncovering and flagging. Wrong flags cost nothing and come straight back off.
How is the record measured?
As a time, where faster is better, kept separately per level. The clock starts on your first click rather than when the screen loads.
What age is this for?
Around seven, on easy. The one idea that needs explaining is that a number describes its neighbours. There is no reading anywhere in the game.
Does it collect data about my child?
No. There is no signup and no name. No session recording and no behavioural advertising. We count how many times a game was opened, with nothing attached that identifies who opened it.