How to play Mines

A field of covered squares, a few of them hiding mines, and numbers that tell you how close the mines are. Open everything that's safe and you've won.

The rules

Every cell on the board is either safe or a mine. When you open a safe cell it shows a number: how many of the eight cells touching it — above, below, to the sides and on the diagonals — are mines. A cell with no mines around it shows nothing, and the game opens all its neighbours for you, which is why opening one cell sometimes clears a whole patch.

Your goal is to open every safe cell. You don't have to flag the mines, though flagging them makes the numbers much easier to read.

No first-click lottery

In many versions of the game, you start by clicking somewhere at random and hoping. Here, every board starts with a safe area already open, so there's something to reason from from the very first move.

Reading the numbers

Almost everything comes down to two observations. The first: if a number has exactly as many covered cells around it as the mines it's showing, those cells are all mines.

The second is the reverse: once a number has all its mines flagged, every other covered cell around it is safe.

Flag, open, read the new numbers, repeat. On Easy boards, that's most of the game. Medium and Hard ask you to compare two numbers at once, and the strategy guide shows how.

Playing on this site

• Tap a covered cell to open it.
• Long-press (or right-click with a mouse) to put a flag on a cell you know is a mine. Prefer one hand? Switch on Flag and every tap places or removes a flag instead.
• Tap a number whose mines are all flagged to open the rest of its neighbours in one go. It saves a lot of tapping on bigger boards.
• The counter above the board shows how many mines are still unflagged.
• Opened a mine? The game doesn't end. The board waits for you to undo the move, so a slip doesn't cost you your progress.
• Hint points at the numbers that tell you something new, and says what they tell you. One hint per puzzle is free; after that there's a one-minute wait between hints.

Keyboard

• Arrow keys move; Space or Enter opens; F flags.
• Z undoes, Y redoes, H asks for a hint.

Board sizes

• Easy: 9×9 with 10 mines.
• Medium: 10 wide, 14 tall, with 24 mines.
• Hard: 12 wide, 16 tall, with 38 mines.

The boards are tall rather than wide so they fit a phone held upright without the cells getting fiddly, and they're the same on every screen. That matters for the daily puzzle: everyone gets the same board with the same opening, so your time compares fairly with anyone else's. After the day's board, Next puzzle gives you as many more as you want.