Mines

About Mines

Mines is a deduction game played on a grid of covered squares. Some of them hide mines. Open a safe square and it shows a number: how many mines touch it, counting the diagonals. Read the numbers together and you can work out where every mine lies, flag it, and open everything else. Open a mine and the round is over.

Most versions of this game leave you, now and then, with two squares and no way to tell which is safe. Not here. Every board is dealt with a safe area already open, and our server plays it through before you see it, keeping only boards that can be cleared by reasoning alone. A fast time is never a lucky one. Medium, 12 by 12 with 24 mines, counts for the weekly leaderboard, which resets every Monday at 00:00 UTC; Easy and Hard are there for warming up and for a challenge.

How to play

1. Pick a level — Medium is the ranked one — and press Start. The clock starts with a safe area already open.
2. Tap or click a covered square to open it. Its number says how many of the eight squares around it hide a mine.
3. Mark a mine with a flag: right-click, long-press on a phone, or switch the Flag button on and tap.
4. Tap a number whose mines are all flagged to open every other square around it at once.
5. Open every square that is not a mine to finish. Opening a mine ends the round.
6. Your time is measured by our server. Sign in to put it on the weekly leaderboard.

Tips

• A 1 with only one covered square next to it has its mine right there. Flag it and look at its neighbours again.
• Read numbers in pairs along a wall: a 1 next to a 2 often tells you exactly which squares hold the mines.
• When a number already touches as many flags as it shows, every other square around it is safe.
• Flags are your notes, not the answer — a wrong flag only costs you when you open around it.
• Near the end, count: the mines still unflagged must fit into the squares still covered.

Questions players ask