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The following happened playing Minesweeper: enter image description here

How do I figure out which square to click?

Michaellogg
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Zaki Mudzakir
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2 Answers2

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There is no way to logically determine which square to pick here

I'm afraid there's no special trick or anything to solve this situation reliably. All the available information is clearly displayed for you, and there's an equal chance of either square having the mine. Minesweeper simply isn't designed to be logically solvable 100% of the time. This is why sides and corners are somewhat dangerous, though the situation can happen in other ways, too.

All you can do is guess and hope for the best.

Community
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Michaellogg
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    I've always hated when the game boiled down to this scenario. When its in the corner like this, I would always choose the corner piece, but there's no guarantee. – Timmy Jim Oct 16 '16 at 03:25
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    I always try to pick one option as soon as I see that it boils down to chance... I wouldn't want to solve the rest of puzzle only to come back to this in one the end and then lose because of bad luck – Lope Oct 16 '16 at 11:25
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    Yeah, you just pick all the luck tiles first so you don't waste your time. There is no logical solution here. – Nelson Oct 16 '16 at 16:20
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Logically, no

Either of those squares can contain a mine, as you have noted. So there is no way to determine which one.

Statistically, maybe

Because the last mine left is either in the upper-left corner or the square to its right, an answer to another Mine Sweeper question may help a bit, though.

If a mine is under the first clicked tile, it is moved to the upper-left corner, if the upper left corner is occupied, the mine moves to the right of the corner tile.

That is sourced to someone who reverse engineered the game.

Statistical analysis

So if you happened to have landed on a mine on your first click, that mine has been moved to the upper-left corner. In this case, it can't have been moved to the square to its right, since that would mean the upper-left corner was already occupied by a mine and you would have a mine in both squares, but there's only one mine left in your example.

So if you did not land on a mine on your first click, you have a 50% chance for either square to contain a mine. If you did land on a mine on your first click, the mine will be in the upper-left corner. Since your board has 99 mines on a 16×30 grid, there's a 99 in 480 chance of having done so.

Combining these, you have about a 60% chance of the mine being in the upper-left corner and a 40% chance of it being in the square next to it.

SQB
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    That is a really dirty game tactic. Though I can understand not triggering the minefield on the first click, at least move it to a random spot then. Awesome answer though :) – Flater Aug 03 '17 at 15:12
  • @Flater, but it does make sense. I've always noticed that you never first click on a bomb. It's the games way of giving you a legitimate starting point, plus it's annoying to lose on your first click of what is suppose to be a game of logic with a little chance mixed in. – RLH Sep 22 '17 at 14:06
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    @RLH: That's why I said "at least move it to a random spot". My issue isn't that the first click is guaranteed to be safe (I agree that it would suck losing a game on the first click), it's that when this is triggered, the mine is always moved to the top-left spot. – Flater Sep 22 '17 at 14:23
  • @Flater, ah I see what you mean. – RLH Sep 22 '17 at 20:09
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    This is so awesome! The situation could have occurred anywhere and the answer would have just been that either choice is equally valid, but exactly here there is only one clearly preferable tile. – Kvothe Aug 19 '21 at 18:18
  • I suppose the statistical solution only applies to the original minesweeper and other minesweeper clones that has been implemented in the same manner. – tnavidi Nov 24 '23 at 11:38