Beginner Minesweeper Leaderboard

What Counts as a Good Beginner Time

Beginner is the difficulty where a single wasted movement is visible in the final number, so the ladder is tight. Finishing a 9x9 board in under 10 seconds is a decent result and the point at which most players stop losing time to hesitation. Under 5 seconds is strong: opening click, cascade reading and finishing clicks have all been compressed into one continuous motion.

Below that the scale changes character. The fastest verified Beginner solve tracked by the external ranking authorities is roughly 1 second. That figure describes the global verified record lists maintained off this site - it is not a time on the table above, and our ranked pool is well behind it.

Treat the ladder as a range rather than a target. Beginner boards vary enough that the same player can post 4 and 9 seconds in one session, so judge yourself on your median rather than on the single time that reached the leaderboard.

3BV and 3BV/s on 9x9 Boards

3BV counts the minimum number of left clicks a board can be solved in. A 9x9 Beginner board usually lands somewhere between roughly 10 and 30 3BV, and that spread is huge in relative terms: a 12 3BV board can be finished in a third of the clicks a 28 3BV board demands, before either player has made a single mistake.

That is exactly why raw seconds are a poor way to compare Beginner players. Dividing 3BV by your time gives 3BV/s, which measures work done per second instead of luck received. Around 1.5 3BV/s is a decent Beginner rate, and 3.0 or higher is genuinely strong. Sorting the leaderboard by 3BV/s rewards the player who solved a heavy board quickly over the one who drew an easy one.

How to Climb the Beginner Leaderboard

A ranked Beginner run is largely decided by its first half second. An opening placed against a corner or an outside edge touches fewer hidden cells, so it tends to cascade further and leaves numbers that sit on a boundary rather than in open space. When the opening instead produces one isolated number, abandon the game and take the next one: on a board this short, restarting costs almost nothing, and grinding for a workable opening is a legitimate tactic here in a way it is not on larger boards.

After the cascade lands, ranking comes down to removing pauses. The lone-1 rule - one number, one hidden neighbour, therefore one mine - has to fire without conscious thought. Any hesitation there is your real gap on this leaderboard, not your click speed.

Play a Beginner board · What is the real world record?
Other boards: Intermediate leaderboard · Expert leaderboard · No-Guessing rankings · What is the real world record?

• Rankings are sorted by best completion time for each difficulty and mode combination. Only your single best solve counts.
• 3BV/s (3-Board Value per second) measures how many logical cell-groups you cleared per second - it is the standard efficiency metric in competitive minesweeper.
• Efficiency is the percentage of your clicks that were necessary - higher efficiency means less wasted clicks on flagging or chord-clearing.
• The Standard leaderboard allows all legal play styles. No-Guessing is a separate category for boards that were fully solvable without guessing.
• Rankings reset each season - the leaderboard shows this season's top times only. Past season results are archived.

Want to climb faster? Study the Minesweeper patterns guide and the efficiency & 3BV/s guide, then put it into practice on the Expert Minesweeper board.

• High efficiency matters more than raw speed at the top. The fastest players typically have 90 %+ efficiency - every click counts.
• Check both Standard and No-Guessing tabs for your rank. Many players rank significantly better in one mode - knowing your comparative strength helps decide where to compete for season rewards.
• Submit a time before the season ends. Season rewards go to the top-ranked players at the cutoff - a single ranked solve secures your season placement even if it is not a personal best.