Minesweeper Unblocked — Play Free Online

Minesweeper is the classic logic puzzle of clearing a minefield without touching a mine. You are given a grid of covered squares, some of which hide mines, and the only way to find out which is to uncover squares and reason from the numbers that appear. It is a quiet counterpoint to the falling-block games on Sand Tetris: nothing drops and no timer pushes you along, so the whole challenge is thinking.

A session is short and tense in a different way from Sandtris. Instead of reacting to a stream of pieces, you read a small pattern of digits, work out a safe square, and watch a region open up. If you like the moment in a block puzzle when a tricky board suddenly resolves, this gives you that feeling over and over. It runs in the browser with nothing to install.

How to play

Every uncovered square shows a number: how many of its up to eight neighbouring squares contain a mine. A blank square means none of its neighbours are mines, and the game opens the surrounding area automatically. Your goal is to uncover every square that is not a mine. Uncover a mine and the round ends.

With a mouse, the standard scheme is a left click to uncover a square and a right click to plant a flag on a square you believe is a mine. On a touch screen the flag is usually placed with a long press, though the exact gesture can vary by build, so try it on the first board if you are on a phone. The first click is normally safe, so start anywhere.

Tips

• Start with the numbers that are easiest to satisfy. A 1 touching exactly one covered square means that square is a mine; flag it and move on.
• Once a number has all its mines flagged, every other covered neighbour is safe. Uncovering them all at once is the fastest way to open the board.
• Look for the 1-2 pattern along an edge: if a 1 and a 2 sit side by side, the extra mine the 2 needs is usually on the side the 1 cannot reach.
• Flag as you go rather than keeping mines in your head. Wrong flags are the most common reason a good board goes bad, so only flag what you can prove.

Similar games on Sand Tetris

If you want another puzzle that rewards planning, Block Puzzle and 11-11 ask you to fit shapes into a grid and clear lines rather than deduce hidden squares. Tetris 99 and Stacktris keep the pressure on with a constant flow of pieces, while Sandspiel is a sandbox with no goal at all. Minesweeper sits at the slow, careful end of the line-up.

It suits a few quiet minutes on a laptop, Chromebook or phone, and a single board is usually over quickly whether you win or not, so starting a new one is easy.