The rules
The board is a field of covered squares with mines hidden under some of them. Open a square: if it is a mine, you lose (in Minewick, a life). If not, it shows a number: how many mines touch it, counting all eight neighbours, diagonals too. A square with no mines around it opens its neighbours by itself.
Clear every square that is not a mine. Flags are your notes: put one on a square you know is a mine.
Read a number
A number tells you how many of its covered neighbours are mines. Two easy cases solve most of the board:
- If a number has exactly that many covered neighbours, they are all mines. A 2 with two covered squares around it: flag both.
- If a number already has that many flags around it, every other covered neighbour is safe. Open them. Tapping such a number does it in one go; that is called chording.
The 1-1 pattern
Two 1s side by side along a straight edge of covered squares, the first one at a wall or next to an opened square. The first 1 sees only two covered squares, and the second 1 shares both of them. So the second 1's mine is among those two, and its third covered square is safe.
The 1-2-1 pattern
Along a straight edge, the numbers 1, 2, 1 in a row mean: a mine above each 1, none above the 2. The 2 needs two mines among its three covered squares, and each 1 allows only one, so they must be the two outer ones.
Its bigger cousin, 1-2-2-1, puts the mines above the two 2s instead.
When the board runs dry
Look at the mine counter near the end. If three mines are left and a group of covered squares can hold only three, everything outside that group is safe. Counting finishes many boards that patterns cannot.
On classic boards you sometimes reach a true coin toss. Minewick checks every board with a solver before you see it, so it can always be cleared by logic: if you think you must guess, there is a pattern you have not seen yet.
Habits that help
- Work the edges of the opened area, not the middle of the unknown.
- Flag only what you are sure of. A wrong flag makes chording dangerous.
- After every move, look again at the numbers it touched: a new opening often unlocks the next one.
Questions
- Is the first click always safe?
- In most versions, and in Minewick, yes: the mines are placed so your first square is never one.
- What does chording mean?
- Tapping a number that already has all its mines flagged, to open all its other neighbours at once.
- Can every minesweeper board be solved without guessing?
- Not on random boards. No-guess boards like Minewick's are built and checked so that logic always finds a next safe square.
