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Minesweeper Difficulty Guide

Board sizes, mine counts, and mine density for Easy, Medium, and Hard — and which one you should play.

Bean Boom offers three difficulty levels, using the same standard board sizes players have known since the original Windows Minesweeper. The rules never change between difficulties — only the size of the board and the number of hidden mines.

Difficulty Overview

DifficultyBoardMinesMine DensityBest For
Easy9×9 (81 cells)10~12%Beginners
Medium16×16 (256 cells)40~16%Intermediate
Hard16×30 (480 cells)99~21%Experts

Easy: Minesweeper for Beginners

Easy mode is minesweeper for beginners — a 9×9 board with just 10 mines. At roughly 12% mine density, nearly every position can be solved with pure logic and well-known patterns like 1-1 and 1-2, so you rarely need to guess. Games are short (typically under a minute), which makes Easy perfect for:

Medium: The Balanced Challenge

Medium steps up to a 16×16 board with 40 mines (~16% density). The larger grid means more information to combine, and endgame positions occasionally require a careful judgment call. Most players consider Medium the sweet spot: challenging enough to stay interesting, forgiving enough to finish most games. If you can consistently win Medium, you're ready for Hard.

Hard: Expert Level Minesweeper

Hard is expert-level minesweeper: a 16×30 board with 99 mines (~21% density). With more than one in five cells hiding a mine, deduction becomes much tighter, and some boards contain positions that logic alone cannot resolve — calculated guessing becomes a real skill. Hard is where the fastest completion times earn the most respect, and where Egg Mode's chain reactions clear the most spectacular swaths of the board.

Which Difficulty Should You Play?

  1. Never played minesweeper? Start with Easy and read How to Play Minesweeper first.
  2. Winning Easy almost every time? Move to Medium — the pattern skills transfer directly.
  3. Consistent on Medium? Hard awaits. Expect longer games and occasional unavoidable guesses.
  4. Want to chase scores instead of times? Hard gives the highest scoring ceiling in Egg Mode — more mines mean bigger chain reactions.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Do the rules change between difficulties?

No. Only board size and mine count change. The rules — number meanings, flagging, first-click safety — are identical on every level.

Is the first click safe on every difficulty?

Yes. On all three difficulties, your first reveal will never hit a mine.

Which difficulty has its own leaderboard?

All of them. Each difficulty has separate leaderboards — Classic Mode ranks completion time (daily, monthly, yearly, all-time) and Egg Mode ranks score (daily, monthly, all-time).

Can I switch difficulty mid-session?

Yes, anytime, with one click above the game board. Your current game restarts at the new difficulty.