Surefoot

That is exactly how Surefoot plays Minesweeper. And it is exactly what she teaches, because she is the League's mentor.

One bright, blustery morning, a young beaver named Dabble came charging up the slope toward her rock, flat tail slapping the grass. Dabble had just lost three boards in a row, one right after another, and was thoroughly fed up.

"It's all luck!" Dabble burst out, before even reaching the rock. "You click a square, and sometimes it's a mine and sometimes it isn't. There's nothing you can do about it. It's just a coin flip, every time!"

Surefoot looked down at Dabble from her rock with kind, thoughtful eyes. She didn't argue. She didn't tell Dabble to calm down. She asked a single question, the one she always asks.

"On your last board," she said, "which square did the numbers prove was safe?"

Dabble blinked, caught completely off guard. "Prove? I didn't... I just picked one that looked okay. One that seemed sort of safe."

"Show me," said Surefoot, and she stepped carefully down off the rock, placing each hoof exactly where she meant to.

Together they studied Dabble's last board: a grid of flat, open tiles and raised, hidden ones. Numbers sat on the open tiles, each one telling how many mines were touching it. Surefoot lowered her head beside a tile showing a one.

"This one says that exactly one mine touches it," she said. "Now look at its neighbors. Only one of them is still hidden. So that hidden square must be the mine. The number leaves it no other choice. That isn't a guess, and it isn't a feeling. It's a proof. It could not possibly be any other way."

Dabble stared at the square. "Oh," Dabble said quietly.

Surefoot moved on to a two nearby. "This two needs two mines. It's touching the one we just found, and another one we can prove the same way on its other side. So it already has both of its mines. That means every other hidden square around it is safe. Not probably safe. Proven safe. You could step on any of them with your eyes closed."

Dabble opened one. Safe. And because that new square revealed a new number, another square suddenly became provable, and then another after that. The board began to open up like a folded map being smoothed flat, one proven square leading straight to the next.

"But what about when nothing is provable?" asked Dabble. "When I'm really stuck and there's nothing left to prove?"

Surefoot smiled, and her scarf lifted in the breeze. "Here's the special thing about the League," she said. "Every board here is built to be no-guess. Before it ever reaches you, it's been checked, to make sure that from the very first opening, there is always at least one square you can prove, all the way to the end. So if you ever feel stuck on a League board, it never means you have to guess. It means there's a proof you haven't spotted yet. Keep looking. Look at two numbers together, if one alone won't do it. The proof is there."