Minesweeper - A How to Guide

If you're a PC user you're probably running one of the various Microsoft Windows (Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista, etc) platforms. If you are, then you more than likely have a copy of a glorious game already installed on your machine - that gem of a game is Minesweeper.

The design of the game is simple, entertaining, and fun, while still being easy to use. Despite this, I frequently see my peers asking me how the game works whenever I play during a boring college lecture. The learning curve for Minesweeper is basic and easy to overcome, as long as you have someone to point you in the right direction. First of all you should pull a copy of the game up yourself.

What you see before you will be a small grid of squares covered up by tiles. Click on any one of the squares. Upon doing this one of two things just happened. 1) you hit a mine and you lost, or 2) some tiles disappeared and numbers appeared on some of the tiles. In the event of case 1, restart the game until case 2 occurs. Once you are at case 2 you can continue your quest of clearing the field of deathly mines!

On each uncovered tile will either be a number or a blank space. The number on a tile indicates the number of adjacent uncovered tiles than contain a mine. Adjacent tiles include corners, so a square has a potential to be touching a max 8 mines at once. If a tile has no number then no adjacent tiles contain mines. The goal of the game is to clear all the tiles except for those containing mines. The tiles containing mines can either be left alone, or you may right-click on them to place a flag. The flag is not binding, and can be removed with further right-clicking if you change your mind.

At this point I believe a basic example would be in order.

Key: X - covered tile. 0 - blank tile. # - number on uncovered tile.

X X X X Suppose we have this set-up of the top left corner of the playing field.
X X X X I click on the top left tile.
X X X X

0 0 0 0 The field may now look like this.
0 1 1 2
2 3 X X

The first move one would make at this point would be to mark the X on column 3, row 3. Why? In column 2, row 2, we have a [ 1 ] square. All squares adjacent to this one are either blank or uncovered with a number, except the one to the bottom right of it. Because of this, we know that square contains a mine. I will right click that square to place a flag [ F ].

0 0 0 0
0 1 1 2
2 3 F X

Because we just placed a flag there I will look at its adjacent squares. I see that also touching this mine is another tile with [ 1 ]. Because that tile is already touching one mine, all other tiles it is touching can not have a mine. Because of this I know that the final X can not be a mine, and so I will click it.

0 0 0 0
0 1 1 2
2 3 F 2

Going off this principle, you can expand your mine clearing for the rest of the field. There are various tricks and tips you can use in your clearing of the field. Firstly, squares with [ 1 ] are your best friend: if you see a flagged mine already touching one of them you can safely uncover all other adjacent tiles. Over time, and on higher difficulties, there may come times when a pure guess is all that can save you. If you're stuck you can always open up another area to clear by clicking in an unknown region on the other end of the field like you did at the start of the game.

Minesweeper is one of those staple games that every PC user should be acquainted with, like the solitaire card game that also keeps me entertained during boring lectures. Minesweeper can keep you entertained to pass the time, or challenge your puzzle solving skills in beating your best times. Either way, Minesweeper is a great piece of software.