Minesweeper Variations: No-Guess, Chording and More
The heart of Minesweeper never changes: covered squares, hidden mines and numbers that count them. But the details differ from one version to the next, and those details make a big difference to how fair and how relaxing a game feels. This page explains the common variations and which ones you can switch on or off in our game's Settings.
Board Sizes and Mine Counts
How hard a board is depends mostly on how crowded it is: the share of squares that hide mines. Our three sizes keep that share fairly gentle.
| Size | Grid | Mines | Share of squares with a mine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 8 × 8 | 10 | about 16% |
| Medium | 12 × 12 | 25 | about 17% |
| Large | 16 × 16 | 40 | about 16% |
Larger boards are not much denser, just longer. On a phone, the Large board is wider than the screen, so its squares keep a comfortable size and the board slides sideways inside its own frame. Some versions of the game offer a "custom" board or very wide expert boards with about one square in five holding a mine; those are noticeably harder, mostly because they force more guesses.
The Safe First Tap
In the oldest versions, your very first click could hit a mine, which is no fun at all. Most versions since then promise that the first square is safe. Some go further and promise that it is a blank, so it opens an area to work from. That is the rule here: the mines are only laid after your first tap, never on that square or its eight neighbours. It is always on.
No-Guess Boards
On a purely random board, you will sometimes reach a spot where two squares are exactly alike and nothing on the board can tell them apart. You have to guess, and half the time you lose. Many players find that the least enjoyable part of the game.
A no-guess board is made differently. Before you see it, a solver plays the whole board from your first square using only reasoning: full numbers, numbers with no room to spare, two numbers together and, at the end, the mine count. If the solver ever gets stuck, the board is thrown away and a new one is made. The boards you get can always be finished by thinking alone.
In our game: "No-guess boards" is on unless you switch it off in Settings. With it off, you get classic random boards. The Hint button still helps on those, and if nothing can be proved it says so honestly and gives you a safe square.
Taking Back a Mine
The classic game ends the moment you dig a mine. Around many kitchen tables, though, a slip of the finger is forgiven. Our "Oops" option does the same: after a mine, the game asks whether you would like to take it back. Undo puts the square back as it was and play goes on.
To keep things honest, a game where you took back a mine still counts as a win when you clear the board, but not as a perfect game. The end screen tells you which it was. If you prefer the strict rule, switch "Let me take back a mine" off in Settings; then a mine ends the game, and you can replay the same board.
Chording
Chording is a shortcut for experienced players. When a number already has as many flags around it as it shows, you tap the number itself and all of its other covered neighbours open at once. On a computer it is often done by clicking both mouse buttons together, which is where the name comes from.
It saves a lot of taps, but it trusts your flags completely: if one of them is wrong, the chord digs a mine. That is why it is off here unless you switch it on in Settings. Tapping a number that isn't full yet does nothing.
Question Marks
Some versions let you put a question mark on a square as a "maybe" note, in between covered and flagged. It can help when you are learning, but most regular players find it slows them down, and many versions have dropped it. Our game keeps things simple with flags only; with no-guess boards, every square can be settled for certain sooner or later.
Timers and Scoring
Minesweeper has no points. Competitive players race the clock, and the classic display shows the time in the corner. We think the game is more pleasant without a clock ticking, so the timer is hidden unless you turn it on in Settings, and there is never a time limit. The end screen tells you whether the game was perfect and how many hints you used, which is a kinder measure of how well it went.
Other Grids
Puzzle fans have tried Minesweeper on all sorts of boards: hexagons, where each square has six neighbours; triangles; boards that wrap around from one edge to the opposite one; and boards where a square can hold more than one mine. They are fun curiosities, but the square grid remains the classic, and it is the one we offer.
Related Games
If you like the reasoning in Minesweeper, try Sudoku, where every square can also be proved without guessing. For the full rules of our version, see how to play Minesweeper, or go straight to the game.