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About Minesweeper Puzzles

Minesweeper Puzzle Rules

The rules of Minesweeper Puzzles are as follows:

• The puzzle contains numbered squares and empty squares in the grid. The numbers indicate how many mines are located in adjacent empty squares, including diagonally-touching squares.
• You must locate the position of every one of these mines in the grid and mark them accordingly.

Here is an image of the start position of a minesweeper puzzle:

It's important to know that you don't need to guess to solve a minesweeper puzzle. However, you will often need to cross-reference between different clue numbers in the grid in order to make progress and reduce the options. The strategy section at the bottom of the page will go through some solving methodology to help you make progress when solving minesweer puzzles.

When solving minesweeper puzzles using our online minesweeper player, below, there are two ways of interacting with the grid: with the keyboard, press the 'M' key to place a mine in your chosen square in the grid, which will appear as a red circle. Press 'M' again to remove the mine. To mark a square as clear with the keyboard, press 'X', and a blue 'X' will appear in the square.

If you do not have access to a keyboard, for instance if you are using a touchscreen device, then you can use the 'Mine' and 'Clear' buttons to the right of the grid accordingly: select a square, and press 'Mine' to place a mine in the square, or to remove an existing mine, and press 'Clear' to mark a square as clear with an 'X', or press it again to remove the 'X' that is currently in a square.

Here is a video that visually explains the rules of minesweeper puzzles:

Play A Sample Minesweeper Puzzle

If you'd like to have a go at solving the example puzzle shown in our sample image above, then you can do so for free online with our Online Minesweeper Puzzle Player

If you enjoy this puzzle type, you can join our online Puzzle Connoisseur's Club for £12 or $17 a year and play a new Minesweeper Puzzle puzzle every day of the year, together with many other fun and interesting logic puzzles.

Strategy and Solving Tips for Minesweeper Puzzles

If you'd like to see a walkthrough of a complete solve of the sample puzzle, then you can do so by watching the video below:

All our minesweeper puzzles have a single, unique solution, that can be achieved through logical methodologies. Here are some solving tips for minesweeper puzzles.

• There are usually some 0s in the start grid. You should instantly put an 'X' around all the squares that touch the 0, including diagonally touching squares, as you know that they cannot contain a mine. For instance, in the sample image above, there is a 0 near the bottom-left of the grid. There are four squares around it that can immediately be marked with an 'X'.


• Also look for squares that have to contain mines. Sometimes there are squares even at the start of the grid that are constrained enough to only have one option. Look at the 1 in the top-right square of the sample grid. Note that only one of its neighbours is a blank square: the one that is south-east of it, so a mine can be placed here. Note how this one mine satisfies all of the squares containing 1 around it, as all three of them are touching this one mine. That means we can mark an 'X' in every other square that these 1s touch, in this instance that's another four squares we know are clear.


• Often you will need to cross-reference between two, or possibly more, clues in order to help you either place mines or mark squares as blank. For instance, look now at the top-left of the sample grid. This contains three ones. Look specifically at the very first digit in the grid, the top-left 1. Now, we know one of its neighbours contains a mine, and there are only two possible placements for it as it only borders two empty squares. Crucially, observe that both of those positions are shared by the other two 1s in that area of the grid. This means that, even though we don't know the exact location of the mine, we can mark the other squares that neighbour those 1s as blank. This is indicated in the image below, using red to show where we know the one mine must go: