I have not been able to find any guide that fully explains this. They're all like "durr durr click this one cause its a mine" like how the fuck am I supposed to know?

So I started playing Minesweeper two months ago and I am having a lot of fun with it after understanding the basic logic behind it. At this point I think I understand all the principles of solving a game. Of course I still make a lot of stupid mistakes and I can still get faster at recognising patterns. But apart from practising - are there any strategies or tips which I might not be aware of to get better times? I feel like I may be able to get to 200s for Expert by practising but I can't imagine getting to times around 100s without some insight I might not have.

Hi all... I've been playing a number of years, and have discovered a number of useful rules of thumb. Lately I've been doing some computer analysis to verify and expand them. So I thought I'd collect them all into a new Minesweeper strategy page.

I think it has better tips than any other page out there I can find - see what you think. Please pass along any feedback, and happy playing!

I feel like there must be some small little strategy or something that I just cannot pick up on. I always end up having to guess multiple times - is there some sort of way I can make my guesses have better odds? Or is there a helpful trick that you use that maybe I'm just not smart enough to think of? Any advice would be great.

I can beat all other bosses pretty reliably but struggle with the minesweeper one. What should i do to beat it more easily?

So like, what's the secret?

My best time on expert is 118 seconds, and I get around 140 seconds consistently. Just wondering if you guys have any technique tips to get faster, my goal is to be under 100 eventually.

To be more specific, I have often wondered if it made any more sense to start solving around the outside of the board working inwards, other theories like that. Just wondering if anyone has anything they would suggest trying to decrease solve time, it would be much appreciated!

Spent 3 hours trying to complete it yet I always get stuck on level 5.

So recently I've been playing minesweeper during work breaks as a short, fun activity to pass the time. There are plenty of guides teaching minesweeper patterns online, and as a result I've gotten pretty good at logic/pattern recognition. The vast majority of the time if there is a guaranteed move, I'll be able to find it.

However, there are inevitably times where I end up in positions where a guess is required, and there aren't many resources online that actually cover in depth the best way to guess. So I'm turning to the community to try and get some tips.

For this discussion, assume that the following is true:

1. We're playing to maximize our win percentage, not to get a good time, so we can take some time to think about the situation if we need to guess.

2. No tool-assistance. Any sort of calculations should be reasonably doable in your head. Obviously the mathematically "correct" thing to do would be to simulate all possible boards based on known information, but that's not something that is even remotely feasible for a person to do in their head while sitting on the toilet.

With that out of the way, let me ask, how should you guess to maximize your win percentage?

My naive approach if I have to guess is to just calculate the probability that a mine is in each square, and guess by clicking on the square with the smallest probability of being a mine. I'm not even sure that this is the correct thing to do to maximize win percentage, but assuming that it is, the method still has some issues, which I will detail below.

The big issue here is that there are many situations where it's pretty hard to even know what the true percentage that a square is a mine is. Something like the below case is pretty easy to calculate:

Simple Case

Clearly each of the unknown tiles has a 33% chance of being a mine.

However, you may have a more complex scenario involving guessing, where certain tiles border multiple known values, such as the following:

Complex Case

What is the probability that the tile above the 2 is a mine? Is it 50%, since it is bordering the 2? Is it 25%, since it is bordering the 3? These are both probably wrong percentages, but what is the actual correct answer? Is the answer somewhere between 25 and 50%, or is it outside of this range? I honestly have no idea.

Here is another complex case that involves guessing:

Complex Case

Which of the above tiles would you click on if you were trying to maximize win percentage?

I just started playing Minesweeper again after months and I need help to beat it can u guys give me patterns? Like these

Recently started playing today, spent like one and a half hours on the easy difficulty on google games and got a 10 second run that felt super good. Currently my strategy is clicking middle-rightish and then clicking a random tile on the left and hoping I get a pocket that opens up a lot of tiles, I do this 4-5 times until I get a decent start and then I finish the game. This strategy only works on easy really and I want to get better overall, any tips/stuff I should be doing as a beginner?