Minesweeper Rules & Controls
Minesweeper is a logic puzzle game. Your goal is to reveal every safe cell on the board without detonating a hidden mine. Every number tells you exactly how many mines are in the 8 surrounding cells - use that information to deduce what is safe.
Controls
Difficulty Levels
Best for learning patterns and building speed
Standard competitive starting point
The global ranked standard for records
Set your own grid size and mine count
Core Rules
First click is always safe. The board generates after your first click, guaranteeing you never start on a mine.
Timer starts on first click. Your finish time is measured from first click to last cell revealed - every millisecond counts in ranked play.
Winning auto-flags remaining mines. When you clear the last safe cell, all unrevealed cells are automatically flagged and the timer stops.
Ranked requires minimum 3BV. Boards with very few mines are excluded: Beginner ≥ 5 · Intermediate ≥ 30 · Expert ≥ 100.
No-Guessing Mode
Key Points
- Numbers are everything. Each digit tells you the exact mine count in the 8 surrounding cells. Two overlapping numbers together can pinpoint mine positions exactly.
- Chording is the most important advanced skill. One chord can reveal 5–7 cells in a single click - it's how top players achieve 130%+ efficiency.
- The No-Guessing mode trains pure logic - playing NG regularly improves your pattern recognition for standard mode too.
- Click on the corner first. Corners and edges have fewer adjacent cells, making them easier to deduce and more likely to open large empty areas on your first click.
- In ranked mode, your time and efficiency are recorded every game - improvement is continuous even when you don't set a personal best.
How to Improve
- Open empty space aggressively. When you find a safe cell in an open area, click it immediately - large empty expansions speed up the game enormously.
- Trust your reads. Hesitating on a safe cell you've already logically deduced is where most time is lost. Commit and move on.
- Play No-Guessing mode to build pure pattern intuition. It eliminates luck entirely, so every game is a logic puzzle you can fully solve - excellent training for Expert standard mode.
Choosing a Mode on Minesweeper.now: Standard, No-Guessing, or Custom
Standard mode is the classic experience: boards are generated randomly, so an occasional forced guess is part of the game. It is the mode used for the main ranked leaderboards and world-record comparisons. No-Guessing (NG) mode serves only boards the server has verified as solvable by pure logic, and it keeps its own separate ranked leaderboard - your NG records never mix with standard records. Custom mode lets you set any grid size and mine count. Custom games pay smaller base rewards, but they are the only way to grow the Difficulty trophy category, and winning a custom board with a 3BV of 1000 or more unlocks the Soldier of Fortune achievement.
A practical rotation: warm up on Beginner, grind ranked records on Expert standard, and switch to NG when you want deliberate, guess-free training. NG play also multiplies your gem drop chance by 1.5×, so it doubles as an economy session.
What Every Ranked Game Pays: XP, Minecoins, and Gem Drops
Base rewards by difficulty
A win pays 50 XP and 10 minecoins on Beginner, 150 XP and 30 coins on Intermediate, and 300 XP and 75 coins on Expert (custom boards pay 20 XP and 5 coins). Losses still pay roughly 10% of the winning XP, so even a failed attempt moves your Experience trophy category forward.
Speed bonuses for fast clears
Your solving speed in 3BV per second multiplies the XP payout: 2+ 3BV/s adds 10%, 5+ 3BV/s adds 25%, and 10+ 3BV/s adds 50%. Fast, chord-heavy play therefore levels you up noticeably quicker than cautious play on the same boards.
Gem drops on ranked wins
Every ranked win rolls a chance at a gem drop: about 4% on Beginner, 9% on Intermediate, and 18% on Expert - and NG mode raises each of those by half again. Harder difficulties also draw from richer gem pools, so Expert wins are the main source of rare crafting material.
Common Beginner Mistakes That Cost Games
Flagging everything. New players plant a flag on every suspected mine. Flags are only useful when they enable a chord; otherwise they are extra clicks that slow you down and lower your efficiency.
Chording on a misflag. A chord trusts your flags completely. If one of the flags around the number is wrong, the chord reveals a mine and the game ends instantly. Only chord when the flags are deduced, not guessed.
Guessing while a deduction still exists. Most "unlucky" losses happen on cells that were actually solvable from an overlapping pair of numbers elsewhere on the border. Scan the whole frontier before accepting a coin-flip - and learn when a true 50/50 situation genuinely forces a guess.
Staying on Beginner too long. Beginner boards are great for drilling chords, but Intermediate and Expert are where the reward structure, the trophy thresholds, and the interesting patterns live. Move up as soon as you win Beginner consistently.
- Go deeper on the rules with how the numbers are calculated and the chording guide.
- Learn the deductions that remove guessing with the 1-1 rule guide.
- New here? Read the quick how to play FAQ, then try a Beginner Minesweeper board.
More guides in the Minesweeper Help Center, or browse the Minesweeper FAQ.