Expert Minesweeper
Expert is the big one: a wide 30×16 grid with 99 mines, the board serious Minesweeper players race on. There is nowhere to hide from the mine density here — you are constantly reading clusters of numbers, working two or three moves ahead, and managing a board too large to hold in your head all at once. On Minesweeper.Free the first click is always safe, no-guess boards keep even this monster logically solvable so a loss is never just bad luck, and fast chording is the difference between a three-minute clear and a stalled one. Beat your own best time on the board every speedrunner measures themselves against.
How to play
- Open and spread out. Take your safe first click near the centre of the 30×16 grid to open the largest area, then expand along its edges reading the numbers.
- Work the edges, then the middle. Clear the easy border regions to bank progress, then use number patterns to break into the dense interior where most of the 99 mines sit.
- Flag lean, chord hard. Flag only the mines you need to open a number, then chord that number to sweep its neighbours. On Expert, disciplined chording is where all the speed comes from.
- Clear all 381 safe squares. Reveal every square that is not one of the 99 mines to win. Your best time is saved so you can chase a faster clear.
Strategy
On Expert, efficiency wins. Clear the loose edges and corners first to bank easy progress, then attack the dense middle with pattern recognition rather than square-by-square logic — the 1-2-1, 1-2-2-1 and reduction tricks pay off constantly. Flag only what you need to chord; over-flagging costs time. Keep your opened regions connected so new numbers keep feeding your deductions, and when a corner truly reduces to a coin-flip on a random board, that is your cue to use no-guess boards instead. Above all, chord relentlessly once your flags are certain.