Minesweeper Patterns Trainer

How the pattern trainer works

Most Minesweeper guides show you a diagram and tell you the answer. This page makes you find it. Every puzzle is a small board with some squares already opened, built so that one well-known pattern sits inside it. A solver checks the board before you see it, so every square you are asked to flag or open is proven by the numbers, not guessed. Flag the mines, open the safe squares, and the board is clear.

You get three lives per board. Tap the wrong action on a proven square, or tap a square the numbers do not decide, and you lose one. The explanation lists the numbers that settle that square, each with how many unopened squares it sees and how many mines it needs, and those numbers light up on the board.

Learn, Drill and Daily 5

Learn walks through twelve lessons from easy to hard. Each lesson has a two-line explanation and two boards. The first board rings the numbers that make the pattern, the second does not. Drill is endless: random boards, pattern names hidden until you solve them, a streak counter, and a speed bonus. Five clean boards in a row win back a life. Daily 5 is five fixed boards per calendar day, the same for every player, rising in difficulty. The pattern library inside the game marks each pattern as new, in progress, or mastered after three flawless solves.

The patterns, in one line each

• Corner 1 and corner 2. A corner square has three neighbours. If the number equals the unopened neighbours, they are all mines.
• 1-1. Two 1s side by side where the first 1's squares are all shared with the second: whatever the second sees beyond them is safe.
• 1-2. On a flat wall, the square just past the 2 is a mine.
• 1-1-2. Run the 1-1 rule first, then the 2 has only two squares left to choose from.
• 1-2-1. Mines above the 1s, safe above the 2.
• 1-1-1. The mines end up at the outer ends of the run and the squares above the middle 1s are safe.
• 1-2-2-1. Mines above the two 2s, safe above the 1s.
• 2-1-2. A mine above the 1 and one past each end, safe above the 2s.
• 1-2-3. A 3 on a flat wall sees exactly three unopened squares, so all three are mines.
• Reduction. Subtract each flag from the numbers it touches. A 2-3-2 under one shared flag becomes a 1-2-1, and a 2-2 next to a flag becomes a 1-1.

How to read a board quickly

Start with numbers that have few unopened neighbours. A 1 with one unopened square is a mine; a 3 with three is three mines. Next compare neighbouring numbers: when one number's unopened squares are a subset of another's, the difference in their values tells you how many mines sit in the squares they do not share. That single idea produces 1-1, 1-2 and the longer patterns. When nothing obvious appears, subtract flags you already placed and look again.

The trainer rewards that habit. Pattern names stay hidden in Drill so you learn to recognise the shape of the numbers, not the label. When you finish a board the name appears, along with the reason the pattern works.

Ready for the real thing?

Patterns only help when they are fast. Once the shapes feel familiar, play full Minesweeper in Mine Field and look for them on a live board. The written reference with diagrams is the Minesweeper patterns cheat sheet.

Frequently asked questions