💣 Minesweeper

How to play Minesweeper.

The board hides a fixed number of mines. Reveal a square and one of two things happens: it detonates a mine and the game ends, or it shows a number. That number is the whole game — it tells you exactly how many mines touch that square, counting all eight neighbours. A blank square touches none, so its neighbours open automatically. Clear every safe square without setting off a mine and you win.

Minesweeper reached a vast audience by being bundled with Microsoft Windows from 1990 onward. For a generation of office computer users it was the game that was simply always there, and it remains a small masterpiece of pure logic — there is no luck once the first square is open, only deduction.

Good play is about reading the numbers. A square showing "1" that touches exactly one unrevealed neighbour tells you that neighbour is certainly a mine — flag it. Once a mine is flagged, any number already satisfied by its flagged neighbours means every other neighbour is safe to open. Work the borders between revealed and hidden squares, where the numbers carry the most information, and use flags to record what you have proven rather than what you merely suspect.