Minesweeper Unblocked — Play Free Online

How Minesweeper actually works

A grid with mines hidden under it. Clicking a safe square reveals a number: how many of the eight squares touching it contain a mine. Clear every safe square and you win; click a mine and you do not.

It looks like a luck game and is almost entirely deduction. The first click is free, and after that every number on the board is a statement about its neighbours.

The two patterns that solve most boards

• If a number equals the count of unrevealed squares touching it, every one of them is a mine. Flag them all.
• If a number already has that many flags around it, every other neighbour is safe. Click them all.
• Alternating between those two rules clears the majority of any board without a single guess.

The 1-2-1 and 1-2-2-1 patterns

Along a wall of covered squares, a row reading 1-2-1 means the mines sit under the two ends and the middle is safe. A row reading 1-2-2-1 means the mines are under the two middle squares.

These come up constantly and recognising them on sight is the single biggest speed gain available. Learn those two and hard boards stop being hard.

When you genuinely have to guess

It happens, and on the harder sizes it happens most games. When it does, count: prefer the square with the lowest mine probability, and prefer a guess that will reveal a lot of information over one that reveals a single square.

Corners and edges are usually the better gamble, because they touch fewer squares and therefore fewer mines.