How to Play Minesweeper: Rules, Numbers, Flags and First Moves

Minesweeper has been on hundreds of millions of computers for thirty years, yet plenty of people have clicked a few cells, hit a mine and never understood what the numbers were trying to tell them. This guide fixes that. In five minutes you will know exactly how the board works, what every number means, how to flag and chord, and the one simple habit that turns Minesweeper from guesswork into a puzzle you can actually solve.

The goal of Minesweeper

Minesweeper is a logic puzzle played on a grid of covered cells. Hidden somewhere under those cells is a fixed number of mines. Your job is to uncover every cell that is not a mine. You never have to find the mines by clicking them — in fact clicking a mine is exactly what you must avoid. Reveal all the safe cells and you win the board; reveal a single mine and the board is over.

The trick is that you are not guessing. Every safe cell you open shows you a clue — a number — and those numbers tell you precisely where the mines are. Learn to read them and Minesweeper turns from a game of luck into a game of pure deduction.

What the numbers mean

When you open a safe cell, one of two things happens. Either it shows a number from 1 to 8, or it is blank. The number is the single most important idea in the whole game:

A number is the count of mines in the eight cells touching it.

Every cell has up to eight neighbours — the cells above, below, left, right and on the four diagonals. A 1 means exactly one of those eight neighbours is a mine. A 3 means three of them are. An 8 — rare, but it happens — means every neighbour is a mine. The number says nothing about which neighbours are mined; working that out from overlapping clues is the actual puzzle.

A blank cell (effectively a zero) has no mines touching it at all. Because none of its neighbours can be dangerous, the game safely opens all of them for you automatically — and if any of those are also blank, it keeps spreading. That is why your first click often clears a big empty patch in one go.

Your first click is always safe

You cannot lose on move one. In this version — like every modern Minesweeper — the mines are only placed after your first reveal, and they are placed away from the cell you clicked. So open anywhere to begin. A common habit is to click somewhere near the middle, because an opening in the centre tends to cascade into a larger starting area than a click jammed into a corner.

Flagging mines

Once the numbers let you prove that a particular covered cell must be a mine, you flag it. A flag does two things: it reminds you not to click that cell, and it lets you "chord" later (more on that below). Flagging is not required to win — you win by revealing safe cells, not by flagging mines — but in practice it is how you keep track of what you have deduced.

The mine counter at the top of the board shows the number of mines minus the number of flags you have placed, so it ticks down as you flag. When it reaches zero and every safe cell is open, you have cleared the board.

How to play with a mouse (desktop)

• Left-click a covered cell to reveal it.
• Right-click a covered cell to place or remove a flag.
• Left-click a revealed number that already has the right number of flags around it to "chord" — instantly open all its remaining neighbours at once.

How to play on a phone (touch)

• Tap a covered cell to reveal it.
• Long-press a cell (hold for a moment) to flag it.
• Or tap the Flag button above the board to switch into flag mode — while it is on, normal taps place flags. Tap it again to go back to revealing.
• Tap a satisfied number to chord, exactly as on desktop.

A worked example

Say you open the board and a 1 appears at the edge of the cleared area with only one covered cell next to it. That 1 is telling you its single mine has nowhere else to be — so that one covered neighbour is definitely a mine. Flag it. Now look at a 2 nearby that touches that same flagged mine and exactly one other covered cell: the 2 already "sees" one mine in your flag, so its second mine must be that other covered cell. Flag that too. Each flag you place often unlocks the next deduction, and the safe cells in between can all be opened. That chain — number proves a mine, mine proves the next number, repeat — is the entire game.

When you genuinely have to guess

Most boards can be solved by logic alone, but occasionally you reach a position where two cells are equally likely to be the mine and no clue separates them. When that happens, pick the cell that touches the most revealed numbers — opening it gives you the most new information — or simply choose the lower-probability cell and accept that Minesweeper, like all great puzzles, has a small element of nerve. The good news: the first-click-safe rule means you always get a clean start to reason from.

Two ways to play here

On CPSCount you can play Minesweeper in two modes. Level mode is a campaign that starts deliberately tiny — the first level is a 5×5 board with just two mines — so a complete beginner can learn the rules in a few seconds, and the boards grow slowly from there. Infinite mode is a high-score chase on big boards: clear one and the next appears, with points for every cell you open. Start with Level mode to learn, then switch to Infinite once the numbers click.