Minesweeper Duo

Guide

How to play Minesweeper

Each number on the board tells you how many of the eight tiles around it hide a mine.

The goal

Open every tile that isn’t a mine. You don’t have to flag anything to win: the game ends the moment the last safe tile opens.

Open a mine and the game is over. Your first tap is always safe, because the mines are placed only after it.

  • Beginner 9 × 9 tiles, 10 mines
  • Intermediate 16 × 16 tiles, 40 mines
  • Expert 30 × 16 tiles, 99 mines
A board after the first tap: a patch of open tiles edged with numbers, a flag, and hidden tiles beyond
One tap opened a clear patch. Its edge is lined with numbers.

How the numbers work

A number counts the mines in the eight tiles that touch it: above, below, on each side and on the diagonals. A tile with no mines around it opens blank, and the game opens the tiles around it for you.

A 2 surrounded by eight tiles, two of which are mines

What a number means

This 2 touches eight tiles. Exactly two of them hide a mine.

A 2 with only two hidden tiles beside it, both outlined

Spot the mines

This 2 has only two hidden tiles beside it, so both must be mines. Flag them.

A 1 beside a flag, with check marks on its other hidden tiles

Spot the safe tiles

This 1 already touches a flag, so every other hidden tile around it is safe to open.

Flagging mines

When you’ve worked out that a tile hides a mine, put a flag on it. A flagged tile can’t be opened by mistake, and the mine counter goes down by one.

Flags are only for you: the game never checks them. Flag a tile again to remove its flag, or turn on question marks in Settings for tiles you aren’t sure about.

iPhone and iPad
Touch and hold a tile. Prefer taps? Turn off Hold to Flag in Settings and use the flag button to switch between opening and flagging.
Mac, or iPad with a pointer
Right-click a tile, or click with two fingers on a trackpad.

Faster play

Chording

Once a number has all its mines flagged, tap the number itself. Every other hidden tile around it opens at once, saving a tap for each one.

If the flags around it don’t add up to the number, nothing happens. If a flag is on the wrong tile, the chord opens a mine, so be sure first.

  • iPhone and iPad: tap the number.
  • Mac: click the number, middle-click it, or press both buttons.
Before: a 2 with both its mines flagged and six hidden tiles around it
Two flags on a 2
After tapping the 2: its six other tiles are open
One tap opens six tiles

Tips for your first wins

  1. 01

    Start with the 1s

    A 1 with few hidden tiles around it is the easiest number to solve. Work outward from there.

  2. 02

    Look at pairs

    Two numbers side by side share tiles. What one rules out often settles the other.

  3. 03

    Use the counter

    Near the end, the number of mines left can tell you which of two layouts is the real one.

  4. 04

    Guess last, guess well

    Some boards do need a guess. Solve everything else first, then pick the tile that would tell you the most.

For power users

Read your game like a pro

Minesweeper Duo keeps the numbers serious players use to measure themselves. Here’s what they mean.

Choose your counters

The two counters at the top of the board can show more than mines and time. Tap either one and pick what it tracks.

  • Mines left the mines on the board minus the flags you’ve placed
  • Time seconds since your first tap
  • Percent cleared how many of the safe tiles are open
  • Safe tiles left tiles still to open before you win
  • Clicks every tap so far, flags and chords included

How your wins are scored

Every win records your time, your pace and your efficiency. They set your personal bests, fill your history graphs and count toward achievements such as Steady Hand and Perfect Clicks. Pace and efficiency both start from one number: the board’s minimum clicks.

Minimum clicks

Minimum clicks is the fewest clicks that could clear a board without placing a single flag. A board with big open patches needs few; a board scattered with lone numbers needs many.

To count it, add one for every opening (a blank patch together with the numbers around its edge, which one tap clears), then one for every number that doesn’t border an opening.

Coming from another Minesweeper game? You may know minimum clicks as 3BV, short for Bechtel’s Board Benchmark Value.

3 openings 13 lone numbers Minimum clicks: 16
A solved 8 by 6 board with three openings shaded and thirteen lone numbers outlined, for 16 minimum clicks
Each shaded patch is one click. Each outlined number is one more.

Pace

How quickly you work through the board. Higher is faster.

Minimum clicks ÷ seconds

16 ÷ 32 s = 0.50/s

Efficiency

How few clicks you wasted. Every tap counts, flags and chords too.

Minimum clicks ÷ clicks

16 ÷ 20 clicks = 80%

Time alone favors lucky boards; pace and efficiency measure you against the board you actually got. Chording can push efficiency past 100%, since one chord opens several tiles: Perfect Clicks asks for exactly that. A game where you used Undo is kept, but never counts as a best.

Reading the stat graphs

High Scores shows your history on each difficulty, so you can see whether practice is paying off.

  • Board cleared draws a bar for each game. A win fills it; a loss shows how much of the board you opened. The big number is your win rate.
  • Pace, Time and Efficiency plot a point for each win, so you can follow one number over time.
  • Choose the window: your last 10, 20 or 50 games, or the last 10, 20 or 30 days. By day, each point is that day’s average, with the day’s games as faint dots behind it.
Board clearedLast 20 games

55% won 11 of 20

PaceLast 20 games

Ready to play?

Minesweeper Duo for iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Download foriPhone and iPad Download formacOS