How It Works

How to play: Left-click to reveal a cell. Right-click to place or remove a flag on a suspected mine. Your first click is always safe — mines are placed after you click.

Chord-click: Left-click a revealed number cell when you've flagged exactly that many neighboring mines to auto-reveal the remaining neighbors. Use this to clear areas quickly once you're confident in your flags.

Strategies: The "1-1 pattern" occurs when two adjacent numbered cells share the same unrevealed neighbors — the difference in their counts reveals which cells are safe. Corners and edges reduce the number of possible mine positions, making them easier to deduce.

Minesweeper was popularized by Microsoft Windows in 1990. The game is NP-complete in the general case — determining whether a valid mine placement exists for a given board state is as hard as any problem in NP.