Expert is the 30×16 board with 99 mines — one square in five, and the size that record lists use. It is dense enough that openings are short and most of the work is reading long walls of numbers. On a phone the board is wider than the screen, so it scrolls sideways inside its frame instead of shrinking the squares.
This size in numbers
| Board | 30 × 16, 99 mines |
|---|---|
| Share of squares that are mines | 20.6% |
| Clicks to clear it (3BV), median | 170 |
| Random boards that would need a guess | 95% |
| First click opens (share of safe squares, median) | 11% |
| Time for the speed badge | 3:00 |
Measured on 300 boards from the same generator that deals yours. 3BV is the fewest clicks that clear a board. A board needs a guess when the three rules the hint uses — counting one number, comparing two numbers, and the total mine count — cannot finish it.
Why expert usually means guessing, and why it does not here
Of 300 boards drawn at random with a safe first click, 95% could not be finished by the three rules our hint uses — somewhere they needed a guess. That number is where expert gets its name for luck. Boards here are drawn again until those rules can finish them, so a loss is a misread, not a coin flip. A median board needs 170 clicks, and the Quick expert badge sits at 3:00.
Questions about this size
- How many mines are in expert Minesweeper?
- Ninety-nine, on a 30×16 board — about one square in five. It has been 30×16 since the first Windows version, and the record lists rank expert on it.
- Can I play expert on a phone?
- Yes. Each square stays at least 24 pixels wide, the minimum target size in the WCAG 2.2 accessibility guidelines, so a row of 30 is wider than most phone screens. The board scrolls sideways inside its frame, and the rest of the page stays put.
Board sizes and the sizes record lists use come from the record keepers' ranking rules: minesweepergame.com/ranking-rules.php