Minesweeper 3BV and 3BV/s

What 3BV Means

3BV stands for Bechtel's Board Benchmark Value. It is the minimum number of left clicks needed to clear a board if you never place a flag. Two kinds of click make up the total:

• Each opening counts 1. An opening is a connected area of blank cells (cells with no mines around them). Click any blank in it and the game clears the whole area plus the ring of numbers around its edge.
• Each isolated number counts 1. A numbered cell that does not touch any opening is never revealed for free, so it needs a click of its own.

Numbers on the edge of an opening cost nothing extra, and mines are never clicked. So 3BV = openings + isolated numbers. A board with big openings has a low 3BV and clears quickly; a board packed with small islands of numbers has a high one.

A Worked Example

Here is a small 8×6 board with 6 mines, fully revealed. Every click you would need is numbered in the order a perfect player could make them.

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

1

24

25

26

27

2

1

1

2

2

1

2

28

2

1

19

1

3

2

210

• Ouverture (un clic la dégage)
• Chiffre dégagé par une ouverture (gratuit)
• Chiffre isolé (un clic chacun)
• Mine

1. Openings: 3. Clicks 1 to 3 each open one blue area together with its numbered edge. They hold 14, 1 and 1 blank cells: even a single blank cell is a full opening.
2. Isolated numbers: 7. Clicks 4 to 10 are the amber numbers (2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2) that no opening reaches.
3. 3BV = 3 + 7 = 10. Clearing this board takes at least 10 clicks, however good you are.

This count comes from the same code that shows 3BV on the result screen after you win, so the example and the game always agree.

3BV Calculator

Deal a random board of any standard size and see its 3BV. Boards come from the same generator the game uses, as if you had made your first click in the centre, and are shown fully revealed.

Débutant9×9Intermédiaire16×16Expert30×16

3BV de cette grille Intermédiaire

71

6 ouvertures + 65 chiffres isolés

C’est une grille typique pour cette taille (la plupart des grilles Intermédiaire : de 49 à 78).

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

2

1

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

1

1

1

1

2

1

2

2

3

3

1

1

2

2

2

4

4

2

2

1

1

2

1

2

2

3

2

2

2

2

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

2

1

2

2

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

1

2

3

3

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

3

3

2

2

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

2

1

2

1

1

1

1

3

3

1

2

2

2

1

1

2

1

1

1

1

1

2

4

2

2

3

2

1

1

1

1

2

4

2

• Ouverture (un clic la dégage)
• Chiffre dégagé par une ouverture (gratuit)
• Chiffre isolé (un clic chacun)
• Mine

Nouvelle grille

Typical 3BV by Difficulty

3BV varies widely from board to board. To measure it, 20,000 boards of each size were dealt with this site's generator and counted. Eight in ten boards fall inside the typical range.

"Typical" is the 10th to 90th percentile. The first click here always lands on a cell with no mines around it, which guarantees an opening, so these values run a little lower than on boards where only the clicked cell is safe.

3BV/s: Speed That Ignores Luck

3BV/s is the board's 3BV divided by the seconds you took to clear it. A 60-second Expert win is impressive on a 195-3BV board and ordinary on a 146-3BV one; 3BV/s tells the two apart. That is why serious players compare 3BV/s rather than raw times, and why this site shows both 3BV and 3BV/s on the result screen after every win.

What a given 3BV/s means for a median board of each size:

As a rough guide: under 1 3BV/s is where most people start, 1 to 2 is a practised player, and above 2 on Expert is fast. Top competitive players average well over 3, and their best games go far higher. Beginner boards are so small that reaction time dominates and 3BV/s swings a lot from game to game, so Intermediate and Expert give the more honest reading.

Efficiency: 3BV per Click

Efficiency is the 3BV divided by the number of clicks you actually made, written as a percentage. A player who never flags and never misclicks can reach 100%: one click per unit of 3BV. Every wasted click, such as clicking a number that was already revealed, pulls it down.

Flagging costs a click per flag, but a flagged number can be chorded open, revealing all its neighbours with one click. Clever chording can therefore beat the 3BV and push efficiency above 100%. Without flags, 100% is the ceiling; flagging players who chord well regularly go past it. This site does not count your clicks, so it shows 3BV and 3BV/s but not efficiency.

Improve Your 3BV/s

Speed comes from reading the board faster, not from clicking faster. Learn the common number patterns in the Minesweeper pattern atlas so you see the safe cells at a glance, and brush up on chording in the how-to-play guide. To practise without losing runs to coin flips, play no-guess Minesweeper, where every board can be solved by logic. When you are ready for the real test, try Expert, where 3BV/s means the most.