Minesweeper looks intimidating the first time you see it: a grid of identical gray squares, a scattering of numbers, and the constant threat of an explosion. In reality, it's one of the purest logic puzzles ever made — and you can learn it in about ten minutes.

This guide teaches you how to play minesweeper from absolute zero. By the end, you'll understand the board, the numbers, the flags, and the exact thought process for winning a game. You can practice everything you learn right here on Bean Boom, our free online minesweeper game — no download or signup needed.

What Is Minesweeper?

Minesweeper is a single-player logic puzzle that dates back to the 1960s and became world-famous when Microsoft bundled it with Windows. The premise is simple: a rectangular grid hides a fixed number of mines. You can't see the mines. Your job is to reveal every safe square without ever touching a mine.

The catch is that you're never blindly guessing (most of the time). Every number you reveal is a clue — a tiny piece of logical information that, combined with other clues, tells you exactly where mines are and aren't. That's the entire appeal: minesweeper is a game of pure deduction.

Curious where the game came from? See our history of minesweeper for the full story.

Step 1: Understand the Board

When a game starts, every cell is covered. Underneath the covers:

• Safe cells — the vast majority. When revealed, they show either a number or nothing at all.
• Mines — revealing one ends the game immediately (a loss).

Board size and mine count depend on difficulty. In Bean Boom:

Difficulty	Board	Mines	Best for
Easy	9 × 9	10	First games
Medium	16 × 16	40	Building speed
Hard	16 × 30	99	Real challenge

If you're brand new, choose Easy. A 9×9 board with 10 mines gives you plenty of room to learn without being overwhelmed. Our difficulty guide breaks down when to move up.

Step 2: Make Your First Click

Every game begins with one covered board and one leap of faith. Click (or tap) anywhere to reveal your first cell.

The first click is always safe. In Bean Boom, the board is generated after your first click, so the generator guarantees you never hit a mine — and never even start next to one.

What happens after the first click depends on luck:

• Best case: you hit a completely empty region. The game automatically reveals the whole connected blank area and its number border. This is called an opening, and it gives you a ton of information for free.
• Typical case: you reveal a small cluster of numbers.
• Worst case: you reveal a single number with everything else still covered. Annoying, but normal — just click again.

Beginner tip: click near the center of the board. Center clicks open up more surrounding cells on average than corner clicks, giving your deduction a head start.

Step 3: Learn What the Numbers Mean

This is the heart of minesweeper, so read this section twice.

When you reveal a safe cell, it may display a number from 1 to 8. That number tells you exactly how many mines are hidden in the eight cells surrounding it — up, down, left, right, and all four diagonals.

A revealed cell with no number means zero adjacent mines. Blank cells are the safest territory on the board — every neighbor of a blank cell is guaranteed safe, which is exactly why flood-fills cascade open the way they do.

We have a whole article dedicated to this: what the numbers mean in minesweeper, including how to combine numbers into certain deductions.

Step 4: Flag the Mines You're Sure Of

When your deduction tells you a covered cell is definitely a mine, mark it with a flag:

• Desktop: right-click the cell.
• Mobile: long-press the cell, or switch to Flag mode with the toggle above the board.

Flags don't win the game by themselves — you win by revealing all safe cells — but they serve two purposes: they stop you from accidentally clicking a known mine, and they help you track remaining mines.

A quick safety habit: when the flags around a number already equal that number, every other neighbor of that number is guaranteed safe. In Bean Boom you can double-click (or chord-tap) a satisfied number to auto-reveal all its remaining neighbors at once.

For everything about flag strategy, see our flagging guide.

Step 5: Repeat — Deduce, Reveal, Flag

Every game is the same loop:

1. Scan your revealed numbers for one whose mines are fully accounted for → its remaining neighbors are safe. Reveal them.
2. Scan for a number whose unrevealed neighbors exactly equal its count → all of them are mines. Flag them.
3. New reveals create new numbers → go back to step 1.

At the start this loop feels slow. Within a few games you'll start recognizing shapes — a "1" against a wall, the famous 1-2-1 line — and solving them instantly. Those shapes are called minesweeper patterns, and they're how fast players play fast.

Step 6: Win the Game

The game ends the moment the last safe cell is revealed. In Classic Mode, your elapsed time is recorded and — if it's good enough — added to the leaderboard.

If you hit a mine instead, the game reveals every mine on the board so you can see what you missed. Don't be discouraged: even expert players lose regularly on Hard. Review where you guessed wrong, and start another game.

Your First Game: A Suggested Script

1. Pick Easy difficulty (9×9, 10 mines).
2. Click the center of the board.
3. Work outward from your opening, using the two scan rules above.
4. Flag only mines you're certain about — no speculative flags.
5. When stuck, don't panic-guess: reread the border numbers slowly. Most Easy boards are solvable with pure logic.
6. Reveal the last safe cell and enjoy your first win.

Common Beginner Mistakes

• Guessing when logic exists. Almost every stall has a deducible move hiding somewhere on the board. Scan the whole perimeter before guessing.
• Flagging speculatively. A wrong flag poisons every deduction downstream. Flag only on certainty.
• Ignoring corners and edges. Cells against a wall have fewer neighbors, so numbers there give stronger information. They're often the easiest place to break a stall.
• Starting on Hard. Hard is 99 mines on 480 cells — brutal for a beginner. Earn your way up.
• Playing fast immediately. Speed comes from pattern memory, not from rushing. Accuracy first, speed second.

Frequently Asked Questions