---
title: "Printable minesweeper puzzles: free, with answers | Once Books"
description: "Free printable minesweeper puzzles. Each number counts the mines in the eight cells around it. Every puzzle has exactly one answer, never needs a guess, and prints with its answer."
source: "https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt"
---

Free printables

# Free printable Mine Hunt with answers

Mine Hunt is minesweeper with a pencil. Each printed number counts the mines in the eight cells around it, diagonals included, and never sits on one itself. Two moves carry most of a board: a number with its mines all found clears the rest, and a number with nothing but mines left marks them.

## By size

Board size and how much of it stays numbered are what make a Mine Hunt harder, and measurably so: each grade needs about three times the search effort of the one below it. Start small and work up.

- [Easy Mine Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/easy) — Free printable easy minesweeper puzzles with answers. A small board with most of it numbered, so the deductions stay local. Print with the answer. No sign-up.
- [Medium Mine Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/medium) — Free printable medium minesweeper puzzles with answers. A bigger board with fewer numbers, so the chains run further.
- [Hard Mine Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/hard) — Free printable hard minesweeper puzzles with answers. A 12 by 12 where overlapping numbers do most of the work.
- [Extreme Mine Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/extreme) — Free printable extreme minesweeper puzzles with answers. A large board for solvers who want a long sitting.
- [Evil Mine Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/evil) — Free printable evil minesweeper puzzles with answers. The biggest board we print, and the longest chains. Still exactly one answer, and never a guess.

## By audience

The rules take one sentence and most people already know them from the computer game, which makes this an unusually easy logic puzzle to hand someone.

- [Mine Hunt with no guessing](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/no-guessing) — Free printable minesweeper puzzles that never need a guess. Every board is proved to have one answer, reachable from the numbers alone.
- [Mine Hunt for beginners](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/for-beginners) — Free printable minesweeper puzzles for beginners with answers. Learn the two moves on a small board, with the answer on page two.
- [Large print Mine Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/mine-hunt/large-print) — Free printable large print minesweeper puzzles with answers. A small board printed big, for easy reading. No sign-up.

## One answer, and never a guess

This is the guarantee the computer game cannot make, and the reason most free minesweeper printables are not worth printing. A board can look perfectly reasonable and still have two layouts, which does not make it harder, it makes the printed answer wrong and the last few cells a coin flip. Every puzzle here is checked by the same solver our Publisher Studio uses, so the numbers fix exactly one layout and the whole board is reachable by reasoning. The answer prints at the back.

## How to solve a mine hunt

Every printed number counts the mines in the eight cells around it, diagonals included, and never sits on a mine itself. Work out where every mine hides from the numbers alone.

### The method

1. Start with the zeros. A 0 has no mines around it at all, so every one of its eight neighbours is clear. That is free information and it is usually what opens the first corner of the board.
2. Then take the numbers that are already full. When a number has as many blank cells around it as mines it is still looking for, every one of those blanks is a mine. A 3 with exactly three blanks left has found all three.
3. And the ones that are already satisfied. The mirror image: once a number has all its mines marked, every other cell around it is clear. Marking a mine and clearing its neighbours alternate, and most of a board falls out that way.
4. When it stalls, compare two numbers that overlap. Two numbers side by side share some of their cells. If a 1 and a 2 overlap and the 1 is satisfied by a cell inside the overlap, the 2 needs its second mine from the cells only it can see. That is the step that gets a hard board moving.

**The one rule people get wrong**

A number counts all eight cells around it, corners included, not just the four beside it. And a cell with a number printed on it is never a mine.

**What the answer page shows**

Every mine, marked on the same grid at the back.

**How the grades differ**

Bigger boards with fewer numbers printed on them, which measurably about triples the chain of deductions a grade at a time.

**Good for**

Anyone who has played the computer game and wants it without the guessing.

## Make one now

Pick a size, then print the puzzle and its answer. No sign-up, no watermark.

[Open the Mine Hunt generator](https://www.oncebooks.com/tools/mine-hunt-generator)[Make a whole book for KDP](https://www.oncebooks.com/kdp-mine-hunt-maker)