How to play Minesweeper

The rules

Reveal every square that is not a mine. Each number tells you how many mines touch that square, including diagonally, so a number can count up to eight neighbours. Reveal a mine and the game is over; clear all the safe squares to win.

In Lily’s Minesweeper the first tap is always safe.

Controls

• Reveal: click or tap a square.
• Flag a mine: double-click or double-tap a square (again to remove the flag). Right-click and long-press work too, or switch to Flag mode so each tap places a flag.
• Open around a number: when a number already has the right count of flags next to it, click it to reveal all its other neighbours at once. This is often called chording, and it is the biggest speed-up in the game.

Choose Beginner, Intermediate or Expert, or Custom to set your own board size and number of mines.

The two basic rules of deduction

1. If a number equals the count of unrevealed squares around it, all of those squares are mines. Flag them.
2. If a number already has that many flags around it, every other neighbour is safe. Open them.

Nearly every move in the game comes from applying these two rules, again and again, along the edge of what you have revealed.

Patterns worth learning

• 1-1 from a wall. Two 1s side by side along a straight edge, the first one against a wall: the first 1’s mine must be in the two squares both 1s share, so the next square along, beside the second 1, is safe.
• 1-2-1. Along a straight edge, the mines sit under the two 1s, and the square under the 2 is safe.
• 1-2-2-1. Along a straight edge, the mines sit under the two 2s, and the squares under the 1s are safe.
• Subtract. If a 2 and a 1 share most of their neighbours, the extra mine belongs in the squares only the 2 can see.

Strategy

• Open from the edges of revealed areas inward; that is where the information is.
• Flag only what you are sure of. A wrong flag makes chording dangerous.
• When a guess is truly unavoidable, choose a square that will tell you the most if it is safe, such as one touching many unknown squares, and make the guess early rather than at the end.
• For speed, flag less and chord more; for safety on big boards, flag everything you find.

Updated 2 November 2026. Written by JPAM Studio, the makers of Lily's Minesweeper.