Minefield Logic

On a computer, left-click a covered square to dig it and right-click to place or remove a flag. You can also move around with the arrow keys (or W, A, S, D), press Space or Enter to dig, and F to flag. Press H for a hint, U to undo and M to switch between digging and flagging.

On a phone or tablet, tap a square to dig it and press and hold to flag it. If you prefer, switch the Dig/Flag toggle under the board to Flag, so that every tap places or removes a flag, and switch back to dig. Undo and Hint sit next to the toggle.

Pick Easy (8×10, 10 mines), Medium (12×16, 32 mines) or Hard (14×22, 60 mines) from the menu at the top, or press New for a fresh board. The counter shows how many mines are left to flag, followed by your time and your best time for that size.

1. The first square you dig is always safe, and so are the eight around it.
2. An open square shows how many of its neighbours, in all eight directions, are mines. A blank square has none, so its neighbours open automatically.
3. A flag marks a square you believe is a mine. Flagged squares can’t be dug by accident.
4. Tapping an open number whose flags are all in place opens the rest of its neighbours.
5. You win when every square without a mine is open. Flags are not required.
6. Digging a mine ends the round. Your score is your clearing time, and lower is better.

Start with the obvious. A 1 with only one covered neighbour has found its mine. A number whose covered neighbours equal its value has found all of its mines. Flag those first.

Count what’s left. Once a number has all its mines flagged, every other covered square around it is safe. Open those, then look at the new numbers they reveal.

Compare neighbours. When two numbers share most of their neighbours, the difference tells you something. If a 1 touches squares A and B, and the 2 beside it touches A, B and C, then C must be a mine. This “subset” reasoning solves most of the harder spots.

Learn the common shapes. A 1-2-1 along a straight edge means mines under both 1s. A 1-2-2-1 means mines under the two 2s. Patterns like these turn into instant moves with practice.

Use the mine counter at the end. In the last corner of the board, the number of mines left can decide which of two layouts is the real one.

Don’t rush the chord. Tapping a number to open its neighbours is fast, but a single misplaced flag turns it into a mistake. Check your flags first.

Hidden-mine grid puzzles grew out of 1960s and 1970s mainframe and home-computer games in which players probed a field for buried objects using distance or count clues. The idea was refined through the 1980s, and the format became world-famous in the early 1990s, when a version called Minesweeper shipped with a popular desktop operating system and taught millions of people to right-click. Mathematicians took an interest too: deciding whether a given partly-opened board is consistent was shown in 2000 to be NP-complete, which helps explain why the late game can feel so tricky. Minefield Logic is ArcadeWren’s own take, with its own board sizes and look, and with no-guess boards so that careful reasoning always wins.

• Speed runs. Learn to chord and flag only when needed, and see how far you can push your Easy and Medium times.
• No-flag play. Some experts never flag at all and just open the safe squares, which saves time but asks more of your memory.
• Hard boards. Sixty mines on a 14×22 grid, where long chains of subset reasoning are common.
• Hexagonal and 3D grids. Versions with six neighbours or with layered boards, which ArcadeWren may offer separately.