What it is

Tic Sweep is minesweeper at the size we think suits a quick session: a 9×9 grid with ten hidden mines. You uncover tiles one at a time. An uncovered tile shows a number — how many of its eight neighbours are mines — or, if it has no neighbouring mines, it's blank and the game automatically opens its neighbours too, cascading outward. Hit a mine and the game ends. Uncover every safe tile and you win. A "flag" mode lets you mark tiles you've deduced are mines, so you don't click them by accident.

How to play

Two modes: Dig (uncover a tile) and Flag (mark a suspected mine). Switch with the buttons above the grid.
Dig a tile. It shows a number — the count of mines among its 8 neighbours — or opens a blank area if it has none nearby.
The first dig is always safe — mines are placed after your first tap, never under it.
Flag the mines you've deduced. Flagged tiles can't be dug by accident.
Win by uncovering all 71 safe tiles. Your time is recorded; best time is saved in this browser.

The trick

Minesweeper has a key pattern that, once you see it, you see everywhere: the "1-1" and "1-2" edge rules. If a "1" tile has only one covered neighbour, that neighbour is the mine — flag it. If two adjacent number tiles constrain the same set of covered tiles, you can often deduce specific safe tiles by subtraction. Beginners click hopefully; intermediate players work the boundary between opened and covered regions methodically, flagging certainties and digging deductions, only guessing when genuinely forced. With practice the early game becomes nearly mechanical and the only real tension is the rare forced 50/50.

What this scored well on

First-click safety. We place mines after your first dig, so you never lose on move one. This is the modern standard and it matters — a game that can kill you before you've made a decision isn't a logic puzzle.
The size. 9×9 with 10 mines is the classic "beginner" board, and it's the right size for a sub-two-minute session. Bigger boards are a different, slower game.
The two-mode toggle. Right-click doesn't exist on touch screens; a clear Dig/Flag toggle makes the game play identically on desktop and mobile.

What it gets wrong

Classic minesweeper has a known flaw we chose not to fix: some boards contain a forced 50/50 guess — a position where logic genuinely cannot determine which of two tiles is the mine, and you simply have to flip a coin. Modern variants sometimes use solvers to guarantee logic-only boards. We didn't, partly to keep the code small and partly because the occasional forced guess is, for better or worse, part of minesweeper's character. If you lose to a 50/50, you didn't make a mistake — but it can still feel unfair.

Who it's for

Tic Sweep is for everyone who ever killed an afternoon with the Windows version, and for anyone who wants a compact, honest logic puzzle. It's also a quietly excellent teaching tool for constraint-based reasoning — every flag you place is a small proof.

Where we'd point you next

If you liked the deduction, try Code Crack (#11). If you liked the grid puzzle, try Tile Flip (#16).

Released · 13 May 2026 · Editor's score 3.6 / 5 · Reviewed by Bill