Expert Minesweeper (30×16 · 99 mines)
Every board here can be cleared by logic alone. No coin-flip 50/50s at the end, no ads between games — just the classic puzzle, quietly.
Click to open · Right-click or long-press to flag · Click a number to open around it
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The Expert board: 30×16 with 99 mines
Expert is the classic hard board: 480 squares and 99 mines, about one square in five. Open areas are small, chains of numbers wind across the whole board, and you will regularly need to combine information from several numbers at once. On a wide screen it is shown in the classic landscape layout, 30 across and 16 down. On a phone or narrow window it stands upright as 16×30, so the squares stay large enough to tap accurately.
Expert is also where guessing hurts most in ordinary Minesweeper. In our tests only about 14% of plain random Expert boards happened to be solvable without a guess. In other words, most random Expert games contain at least one forced coin flip, often near the very end. Here every Expert board is checked before you play it, so every one of them can be cleared by logic alone.
How to approach an Expert board
Work the board in regions. After the first click opens an area, clear everything the basic rules give you, then move along the boundary looking for the familiar shapes: 1-1 against a wall, 1-2-1, 1-2-2-1. Chording is essential at this level — flag the mines you are sure of and click satisfied numbers to open several squares at a time.
When the obvious moves run out, look for places where two numbers share some of their closed squares. If one number needs one more mine than the other and has exactly one extra closed square, that square is a mine and the other number’s extra squares are safe. This subset reasoning is behind most of the harder deductions on Expert.
The endgame: counting mines
Expert games are often decided in the last corner. When only a handful of closed squares remain, look at the mine counter. Sometimes the numbers alone allow two arrangements, but only one of them uses exactly the number of mines that are left. The solver that checks each board counts mines in the same way, so if the numbers do not settle it, the count will.
On a guess-free board you can trust that: if it looks like a 50/50, it is not. Take another look at the counter and the numbers next to the region before you click.
Speed and records
Expert times depend on clean, efficient clicking as much as on reading the board. 3BV — the minimum number of clicks needed to clear a board — tells you how much work a board needs, and 3BV per second shows how efficiently you cleared it. The app (coming soon) shows both, along with your best and top ten times, win streaks and a daily calendar.
Questions
How many mines are in Expert Minesweeper?
Ninety-nine mines on a 30×16 board of 480 squares — the classic Expert size. On phones the same board is shown upright as 16×30.
Is no-guess Expert easier than normal Expert?
The size and the number of mines are the same, so the logic is just as hard. The difference is that you never lose to a forced coin flip; every loss is a mistake you could have avoided.
Why is the Expert board vertical on my phone?
A 30-square-wide board would make each square too small to tap on a phone. Turning it upright to 16×30 keeps the squares a usable size. It is the same board size, just rotated.
How long does it take to make an Expert board?
A few milliseconds. Generating and checking an Expert board takes about 3 ms on average on a laptop, so the board appears as soon as you click.