Find Your Carrot

Find Your Carrot is the classic minesweeper puzzle, re-planted as a carrot garden and rebuilt to be calm instead of punishing.

Nothing explodes here. The things hidden in the soil are carrots, and the number on each square you dig tells you how many carrots are buried in the eight squares touching it. Read the numbers, work out where the carrots must be, and plant a flag on each one. Clear every empty square and the harvest is yours.

HOW TO PLAY

• Tap a square to dig it up
• A number means "this many carrots are touching this square"
• An empty square clears the whole patch around it in one go
• Press and hold to plant a flag where you are sure a carrot is hiding
• Dig up a carrot by mistake and the bunny simply eats it, so you start the patch again with nothing lost

THREE DIFFICULTY LEVELS Start on a 5x5 patch that takes about a minute to clear, then work up to the full 16x30 field that classic minesweeper players will recognise as expert size. Every board is freshly planted, so no two runs are the same.

WHAT THE GAME ACTUALLY TEACHES Minesweeper is not a guessing game, and that is the point. Every flag you plant is a small piece of formal reasoning: counting the neighbours, comparing what the numbers allow, and ruling out the squares that cannot possibly hold a carrot. New players start by counting. Experienced players start seeing patterns and solving whole corners at a glance.

A CALMER MINESWEEPER

• No bombs and nothing that explodes
• No timers, so nobody is rushed
• No advertising