Little secrets · 01

Your first click gets a second chance.

A first move should be an invitation. In our Minesweeper, even a click on a mine gets one.

The board is already there before you touch it: 81 cells, ten mines, one deterministic seed. If the first cell you reveal contains a mine, our core moves that mine to the first empty cell in row order. Then it counts the neighboring mines again.

You get a safe first cell. You do not get a guaranteed empty opening, or a guarantee that every later move can be solved without guessing.

Make the mine move.

This inspection view deliberately shows every mine. The outlined cell starts with a mine in it. Press the button to send that exact click through the WebAssembly core used by the game.

Two positions change. Ten mines remain.

The clicked cell loses its mine; another cell gains one. The total stays the same. This policy is deterministic, so a replay records the original seed and the click, rather than saving a second board.

// Excerpt from our cores/minesweeper.c
cells[index] &= ~MINE;
for (int target = 0; target < board_width * board_height; ++target) {
    if (target != index && !(cells[target] & MINE)) {
        cells[target] |= MINE;
        break;
    }
}
count_neighbors();

Source: our original-authored ms_reveal function in cores/minesweeper.c. We test first-click safety, mine totals and neighbor counts across 3,000 seeds. An original Windows executable is still needed to compare its relocation policy with ours.

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