Minesweeper
NEWWorks on both desktop and mobile. Tap or click to play.
About This Game
The classic Minesweeper game, free online. Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert boards with flagging, a timer, and best-time tracking. Play instantly in your browser.
How to play Minesweeper
Objective: Reveal every cell that does not hide a mine, on a 9x9, 16x16, or 16x30 grid, without ever clicking a mine.
Pick Beginner (9x9, 10 mines), Intermediate (16x16, 40 mines), or Expert (16x30, 99 mines) at the top. Your first tap is always safe: mines are placed only after you click, and that cell plus its eight neighbors are kept mine-free. So open near the middle of the board to give yourself the widest starting clearing. The timer starts on that first reveal and shows minutes and seconds.
A revealed cell shows a number from 1 to 8, the count of mines in the eight cells touching it, each drawn in its own color. A cell with zero adjacent mines shows blank and cascades open automatically, flooding through connected blank cells and their numbered borders. That chain reaction is why a good first click can clear a large region at once. Use the numbers around a hidden cell to deduce whether it is safe.
Flag suspected mines so you do not open them by accident. On desktop, right-click to flag and left-click to reveal. On touch, tap to reveal and press and hold for about 0.4 seconds to flag, or switch on Flag Mode so every tap flags until you turn it off. You win the instant all non-mine cells are revealed; flagging mines is optional. Clicking a mine ends the game and shows every mine on the board.
Tips and strategy
Open in the center
Because your first click and its eight neighbors are guaranteed safe, tapping near the middle rather than a corner starts a larger cascade and exposes more numbers to reason from. Corner openings waste that free clearing.
Read a 1 against a wall
When a 1 sits at an edge or corner it has fewer hidden neighbors. If only one unrevealed cell touches it, that cell is the mine. Flag it, then use nearby numbers to open the rest safely.
Subtract satisfied numbers
Once a number already touches its full count of flags, every other cell around it is safe to reveal. Clear that known-safe cell, then re-check the fresh numbers it exposes for your next forced move.
Flag Mode for dense areas
In tight clusters where a stray reveal loses the game, toggle Flag Mode on so taps only plant flags. Mark every suspected mine, switch it back off, then open the remaining cells without risking a misclick.
The history of Minesweeper
Minesweeper grew out of grid-based logic games written for early personal computers in the 1980s, with titles like Mined-Out and Relentless Logic setting the core idea of crossing a hidden minefield guided by neighbor counts. Microsoft later bundled its version with Windows, which put the game on millions of machines and cemented the difficulty tiers used here: a beginner grid, a 16 by 16 intermediate grid, and a 16 by 30 expert grid that speedrunners have raced for decades.
Frequently asked questions
Can I lose on my first click?
No. Mines are placed only after your first tap, and the code marks that cell plus its eight neighbors as forbidden, so the opening reveal is always safe and usually starts a cascade. The layout is different every game because mines are placed at random.
Do I need to flag all the mines to win?
No. The win check only counts revealed non-mine cells. The moment you uncover every safe cell you win, whether or not you flagged a single mine. Flags are a memory aid to stop you clicking a mine by mistake, not a win requirement.
How do I flag a cell on a phone?
Press and hold a cell for about 0.4 seconds to plant or remove a flag. Alternatively, turn on Flag Mode with the button under the board so every tap flags instead of reveals. Dragging your finger scrolls the board and does not count as a tap.
Does clicking a number clear its neighbors?
No. This version does not support chording, so clicking a satisfied number does nothing. You reveal cells one at a time by tapping hidden cells yourself. Use the numbers to work out which neighbors are safe, then open each of them individually.