Minesweeper — Beginner
Beginner minesweeper is the classic 9 × 9 grid hiding 10 mines — about one mine in every eight squares and the gentlest of the three standard board densities. Its smaller grid makes it the right place to learn what the numbers mean, practise flagging, and recognise common patterns.
New game lays a fresh board, the flag button turns tapping into flagging — there is no right-click on a phone — Hint highlights one move proved by a visible clue, and the three-dot menu holds the keyboard shortcuts.
Your statistics · Beginner
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
This board
9 × 9 with 10 mines — 12.3% density. Almost always solvable by logic alone.
Keyboard
- Tab
- Move into the grid — one stop, not one per square
- Arrows
- Move between squares
- Home / End
- First or last square in the row
- Enter
- Open the square
- F
- Flag or unflag
- C
- Chord an open number
- Grid
- 9 × 9 — 81 squares
- Mines
- 10 — 12.3% density
- First click
- Always safe
- Practice target
- A clean, logical solve
- Goal
- Open every safe square
What is beginner minesweeper?
It is the smallest of the three standard boards: eighty-one squares, ten of them mined. That works out to a 12.3% mine density, against 15.6% on the intermediate board and 20.6% at expert. Density and board size both shape the difficulty — the numbers you uncover are the count of adjacent mines, and the smaller, sparser board is easier to scan.
The practical consequence is that deductions are usually easier to spot here than on the larger boards. Minesweeper can still produce an ambiguous position, so a careful player sometimes has to choose between covered squares, but beginner keeps those moments less demanding while you learn.
How do you play your first game?
Click anywhere to open your first square; on this site the first click is always safe, and the board is laid out after you make it so a mine can never appear under your finger. From there the loop is: read a number, work out which of its neighbours must be safe, open those, and flag the ones that must be mines.
- A 1 touching exactly one hidden square means that square is a mine. Flag it.
- A number already touching enough flags is satisfied — every other neighbour of it is safe to open.
- Open a square whose number matches its flags by tapping it again to chord: every remaining neighbour opens at once.
- Stuck? The Hint button names a square that is provably safe or a mine — never a guess.
On a phone there is no right-click, so the flag button turns tapping into flagging; the keyboard works too, with arrow keys moving one roving cursor around the grid.
How do you get faster at beginner minesweeper?
By chording instead of clicking one square at a time. When a number's flags already match it, its whole neighbourhood opens in one action, and strong players chord far more often than they open singles. The other habit is pattern recognition: the common configurations — a 1-2-1 or a 1-2-2-1 against a wall of hidden squares — have fixed solutions you can apply on sight instead of counting every time.
Start by aiming for a clean solve, then use your own best time as the next target. Do not chase the clock before the logic is automatic — speed at minesweeper comes from recognising patterns without repeatedly recounting every neighbour.
When should you move up from beginner?
When you finish more games than you lose, and losses come from a slip of the finger rather than a misread number. The 16 × 16 intermediate board uses everything you learned here and adds longer chains of deduction across a wider grid — nothing conceptually new, just more of it per position. The full rules of minesweeper are on their own page if you want worked examples first.
Minesweeper — Beginner questions people ask
- How many mines are on the beginner minesweeper board?
- Ten, on the 9 × 9 grid of 81 squares — a 12.3% mine density. It is the smallest and sparsest of the three standard boards, making its deductions easier to scan.
- Is your first click always safe in minesweeper?
- Here, yes. The board is generated after your first click and the opening square plus its neighbours are kept mine-free, so nobody dies on move one. Traditional implementations that pre-lay the board cannot promise this; this one can.
- What is the difference between beginner and intermediate minesweeper?
- Board size and density. Intermediate is 16 × 16 with 40 mines at 15.6% density, against 9 × 9 with 10 mines at 12.3%. The rules are identical; the larger board just runs longer deduction chains per position.
- Can the beginner board force you to guess?
- Yes. Any randomly generated minesweeper board can reach a position where the visible clues do not identify one certain move. The hint never chooses a square at random: it checks two direct clue rules and reports when neither produces a move, though a wider pattern may still exist.
The full rules of minesweeper
This page is one rule set. The complete rules, with worked examples and the questions beginners actually ask, are on how to play minesweeper, and every rule set is switchable on the main minesweeper page.