Terminal Sweep
Type your moves. Then write a bot — out of rules, not code — and find out which strategy actually wins.
💻 Open the terminal →The rules are the cast
- done. A number that already touches all its mines — its other neighbours are safe.
- full. A number whose hidden neighbours are exactly the mines it still needs — flag them.
- subset. One number’s hidden squares sit inside another’s — the difference is decided.
- guess-safest. No sure move left: open the square with the lowest exact mine odds.
- guess-random. No sure move left: open anything. (Is it really worse? Race it.)
A real case · you decide
A case: Tomasz’s tournament bot
Tomasz — a 16-year-old entering a solver bot in his coding club’s Minesweeper tournament
Tomasz’s bot clears the easy boards but freezes on about a third of them. The tournament is Friday.
His bot knows three sound rules: open around a satisfied number, flag a number’s last hidden squares, and the subset rule. Whenever none of them fires, it stops — “stuck”.
A friend says: “Just guess randomly when you’re stuck.” Another says: “Guess first — it’s faster.” Tomasz decides to test instead of arguing.
Where does the guess block go?
His bot now wins 72%. How should he report it?
The strongest idea wasn’t a clever guess. It was the order of the rules, and a fair way to test them.