Chordy

In the League, the move is called a chord. And Chordy is its greatest champion, and its most careful one.

A young duckling waddled up to the pond one day, flustered. "Everyone keeps telling me to chord," she said. "But I tried it, and I hit a mine. I don't understand!"

Chordy's eye-stalks swivelled toward her with kind interest. "Show me the board where it happened."

She showed him. Chordy scuttled sideways across the tiles until he reached a number three, surrounded by hidden squares and three little flags.

"Here's how a chord works," he said. "This three says three mines touch it. If you've already flagged all three of those mines, then every other hidden square around the three must be safe. The number has used up all its mines. So instead of clicking each safe square one by one, you click the three itself, and all its other neighbours open at once."

He spread his claws in a wide ring. "Pinch! One click instead of five. That's how the best players get their efficiency above one. Clicksy loves it."

"Then why did mine go wrong?" asked the duckling.

Chordy leaned his eye-stalks down close to her flags and studied them for a long time. Then he pointed one claw gently at a flag.

"This one," he said. "Was it proven?"

The duckling hesitated. "I... thought it looked like a mine."

"Ah," said Chordy softly. "That's the only danger in a chord. A chord trusts your flags completely. It doesn't check them. If every flag is on a real mine, the chord is perfectly safe. But if even one flag is in the wrong place, then the real mine is still hidden somewhere in the ring. And when you chord, you open it."

The duckling's feathers drooped. "So the chord didn't make the mistake. My flag did."

"Right," said Chordy kindly, and he gave her a gentle tap with the flat of his claw. "And that's actually good news! It means chording isn't dangerous. Guessing flags is. If you only flag mines you've proven, like Surefoot does, then your chords are always safe. The big move is only as good as the small steps underneath it."

He showed her how to check each flag first: find the number that proved it, make sure the count really forced it. Then, once every flag around the three was certain, she clicked the number.