Minesweeper — Intermediate
Intermediate minesweeper is the standard 16 × 16 board with 40 mines — 256 squares at 15.6% density. It keeps every rule of the beginner game and stretches each deduction across a wider grid, creating a longer challenge without the full scale of expert.
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 · Intermediate
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
This board
16 × 16 with 40 mines — 15.6% density. The standard practice board.
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
- 16 × 16 — 256 squares
- Mines
- 40 — 15.6% density
- First click
- Always safe
- Good target
- Under three minutes
- Goal
- Open every safe square
What changes at intermediate minesweeper?
Nothing in the rules and everything in the texture. Four times the area of the beginner board at a higher mine density means numbers arrive in longer runs, deductions chain across more of the grid before they terminate, and a single misread near the middle can propagate into a lost quarter-board. The game stops being a sequence of small local puzzles and becomes one connected argument.
This is also where efficiency starts to matter for its own sake: forty mines leave 216 squares to open, and chording through satisfied numbers is several times faster than opening them one by one.
How do you win intermediate minesweeper more often?
- Work edges and corners first. Numbers along a wall have fewer hidden neighbours, so their constraints bite harder and solve earlier than mid-board numbers.
- Chord whenever a number is satisfied. On this board the time saved is not a nicety, it is most of your final clock.
- When two positions disagree, prefer the reading that explains both numbers. A hypothesis that needs one of two neighbouring numbers to be wrong is not a hypothesis.
- Flag deliberately. Chording only works when a number has the matching flags, so flags are useful — but double-check each one before using it to open a whole neighbourhood.
- If a position truly requires a guess, spend it where the odds are best and early, while the rest of the board is still cheap to abandon.
Is intermediate harder than beginner, really?
Meaningfully, yes — but through volume rather than novelty. At 15.6% density most deals remain solvable by logic alone, yet the fraction needing a guess is higher than beginner's, and the cost of a mistake is measured in dozens of squares instead of a handful. Players who clear beginner routinely usually need a few sessions here before their win rate recovers; that dip is normal and it is where the actual skill of the game gets built.
The full rules of minesweeper with worked examples are on their own page, and when intermediate stops feeling big, the expert board is waiting with ninety-nine mines.
How long should intermediate take?
Around three minutes is a fair target for a clean intermediate win, with comfortable players running well under two. Times matter less than method here: a slow win that used no guesses teaches more than a fast one that survived a coin flip. Statistics are kept per board size on this site, so your intermediate record stays separate from your beginner and expert ones.
Minesweeper — Intermediate questions people ask
- What size is intermediate minesweeper?
- Sixteen by sixteen — 256 squares with 40 mines, a 15.6% density. It is the middle of the three standard boards: larger and denser than beginner, but much shorter than expert.
- Can you play intermediate minesweeper on a phone?
- Yes. The board scrolls inside its own frame if a width-constrained screen cannot fit all sixteen columns at full size, tap-to-flag replaces right-click, and the keyboard cursor works too.
- How do hints work in intermediate minesweeper?
- The hint checks each revealed number for two direct cases: all its mines are flagged, or all its remaining hidden neighbours must be mines. It highlights a move proved by either rule; if neither produces one, it reports no simple deduction instead of guessing, though a wider pattern may still exist.
- When should I try expert minesweeper?
- When intermediate wins feel routine rather than earned — typically once you clear the majority of your boards without using the hint. Expert raises the density to 20.6% on a 30 × 16 grid, where guessing becomes a normal part of the game.
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.