How the Minesweeper AI Works

What is Minesweeper?

Minesweeper is a puzzle where you try to uncover all the safe squares on a grid without clicking on any hidden mines. Each time you open a cell, it shows a number telling you how many mines are hidden in the eight neighboring cells.

What is a “Sentence”?

In this AI, a “sentence” is a simple fact the program learns from each opened cell. For example:

“Among these 5 covered neighbors, exactly 2 are mines.”

The AI collects many such sentences and then uses them to decide which cells must be safe and which are definitely mines.

How the AI Thinks: Step-by-Step

1. Pick a covered cell to click (first move is random).
2. Open the cell:
   - If it is a mine → game over.
   - Otherwise, see the number of adjacent mines (0–8).
3. Create a new sentence: “Among its covered neighbors, there are [number] mines.”
4. Add this sentence to the AI’s knowledge base.
5. Look through all sentences to find:
   • SAFE cells: where a sentence says “0 mines here,” so every cell in that group is safe.
   • MINE cells: where a sentence says “all these cells are mines.”
6. Compare sentences that share cells to discover new facts:
   - If one group is a subset of another, you can subtract to learn new counts.
7. Repeat steps 5–6 until you cannot mark any new safe or mine cells.
8. If no safe moves are known, guess by choosing a random covered cell.
9. Go back to step 2 and continue until you win (all safe cells open) or lose.