Playing Minesweeper on Puzzled

Reveal, flag and chord

• Tap or click a covered cell to reveal it. Right-click to toggle a flag, or focus the cell and press F. On a phone, press and hold; moving your finger cancels the hold.
• Flag mode turns taps on covered cells into flag toggles. Switch it off to reveal individual cells. Revealed numbers still chord with Flag mode on. A flag protects a covered cell from an ordinary reveal.
• To chord, tap a revealed number with exactly its count of surrounding flags. The game opens its unflagged neighbours. Prove your flags first: a matching count does not guarantee correct positions.

• Practise flagging and chording

Safe start and Try your luck

• A field is dealt before you open it. The marked safe start is clear of mines and opens a blank region. Solo always marks that start.
• In rooms, the host chooses Safe start or Try your luck and can change it from the room menu. Try your luck hides the marker; it does not move the mines or make an arbitrary first tap safe.
• The generator checks a logical solving path from the designated start. Opening somewhere else does not carry that same guarantee, and the introductory techniques do not cover every deduction the generator can require.

• Return to the first-move walkthrough

A mine hit: solo and rooms

• In a multiplayer room, a mine hit stops your board until Try again. Only the hit mine is shown. Try again clears your progress on that field, keeps the mine positions and starts another attempt.
• In solo, a hit shows all mines so you can inspect the mistake. Play again deals a fresh field; it does not ask you to solve a layout whose answers you have just seen.
• A mine hit does not itself stop the clock. Use Pause when taking a break. Hiding the mine-hit card lets you inspect the board; it does not make that attempt playable again.

Time, pause and hints

• Your puzzle has its own play clock. Pause stops it and veils the board. Resume returns to the same puzzle.
• A successful Minesweeper hint opens one safe cell and adds 30 seconds of penalty. Hint penalties are separate from play time on screen, but count in the total used for standings.
• Hints are five seconds apart in normal play and are unavailable while paused, after a hit or after completion. They prefer a cell proved safe by the revealed numbers; a hint is not a free explanation of the proof.

04:33 play time + 0:30 penalty = 05:03 total

Finishing the field

• Open every safe cell and flag every mine. Nothing is automatically flagged for you. The final move may reveal the last safe cell or place the last required flag.
• The counter is total mines minus placed flags. Zero means the counts match, not that the positions are right. A wrong flag can leave a safe cell covered and a mine unflagged.
• New puzzle in solo lets you choose a difficulty. Easy is 8×8 with 10 mines, medium 10×10 with 15, hard 13×13 with 26, and expert 16×16 with 44.

• Practise using the remaining mine count

Separate boards, shared race

• Players on the same room round receive the same minefield, but each has a separate board and clock. Your flags and reveals do not open cells for other players.
• Standings compare completed puzzles first, then cumulative finish time including penalties, then progress on unfinished work.
• When watching is allowed, Full shows opened numbers and flags. Shape shows opened positions without numbers or flags. Watching from your seat follows the same room policy; it does not expose hidden mines.

Questions