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Book Of Minesweeper Puzzles

Minesweeper puzzles are a fantastic and fun little logic puzzle, so it is perhaps a little surprising that they are hard to find in print.

That all changes with this great collection of 100 of these puzzles for you to enjoy. They are presented on a 10x10 grid, and the puzzles get gradually more difficult as you work your way through. All the answers are included at the back of the book.

So how do you play the minesweeper puzzles in this book? Well, the rules are simple: there are a series of mines hidden in the grid. You need to work out their location and mark them in. To help you do this, some squares have a number in them. This tells you the number of mines that are hidden in adjacent squares to that one - including diagonally adjacent squares. Squares that contain a number cannot also contain a mine.

And that's all there is to - it is a logic puzzle with one solution per puzzle, and you can reach that solution just using logic that follows from the rules above: you won't need to guess to solve any of the puzzles in this delightful book of 100 minesweeper puzzles that we hope you'll enjoy solving.

If you would like to try a few of the puzzles before buying this book, please click the link below:

Minesweeper Sample

The book of Minesweeper Puzzles is available to purchase right now from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Amazon.eu. Please click the relevant link below to purchase this book via Amazon:

If you're based in Europe but outside the UK, then this book is also available on the version of Amazon in your country.

Minesweeper Puzzle Solving Tips

Never tried a minesweeper puzzle? You can try a sample Minesweeper Puzzle Online here. If you prefer to play puzzles online rather than in print, you can also play thousands of online puzzles with a membership to the Puzzle Connoisseur's Club.

Here is a video that explains the rules of minesweeper puzzles - if you're unsure, watch this video before reading the strategy and solving tips below:

The puzzles in this book can get quite tricky, but they can all be solved with logic and have a single solution. So what rules will you need?

Well, the simplest rule is that if there is a 0 then remember to mark all the squares around it - including diagonally adjacent squares - as blanks. We suggest using an 'x' for a blank square but you might prefer a dot or similar. For the bomb squares, perhaps putting a circle in is most common, others prefer to write the letter 'B' instead.

Typically when solving these puzzles, though not always, you can make most progress by looking at the corners first, and then moving around the edges, and then into the centre: this is of course because these squares have less neighbours than central squares and therefore less options for you to consider - and therefore they can often bear fruit early in the solve progress. If you look at the sample puzzle to the right then you can see from the top in the top right corner that the two mines can be written straight in, and this also takes care of the 2 and the 1 beneath it. Many solvers like to put a line through a square once all the mines it is associated with are placed - this can be good accounting and ensure you don't miscount or still count as live a square for which actually all the mine placements have already been deduced.

In addition to the simple 'this must' or 'this can't' go here rules, and the good accounting practice with regard to marking placed mines, and empty squares and fully-placed mine totals, the hardest rule you will need is to cross-reference between overlapping placements. For instance, on any occasion where information about mines is shared by squares, then you might need to cross-reference between those squares to make deductions. This can be particularly tricky when there are several numbered squares together that share adjacent cells: in these instances you might have to consider the possible ways these squares can interact to make progress. But it is important to remember that you will never need to do more than cross-referencing between groups like this and thinking 'if this is placed here, then because of the neighbouring mine placements, it would be impossible to place a mine over there, so therefore this can't be placed' and similar: in other words you will never need to actually guess and see what happens, you can use 'if this, then that' logic to solve all these puzzles and won't need anything harder.

Typically you will be able to see in your head that one of two squares, say, must contain a mine but you're not sure which: this is the sort of logic that can often be used to place other mines elsewhere or else mark empty squares. But if you find it tricky to visualise, you might like to use small pencil dots for the combinations you are checking in your head and put them actually on the paper to see the implications of a placement before proceeding.

This second video shows how to solve the sample puzzle step-by-step:

Minesweepers

minesweeper interior


General Knowledge Quiz 2

In our new series of videos, you can learn about new puzzle types and take part in quizzes. Why not have a watch?

This is our second general knowledge quiz. It's time to see how good your general knowledge is! We hope you enjoy having a go and seeing what score you'll get!




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