I doubt it. A guaranteed-solveable minesweeper scenario isn't just about the global board setup, but about what information is available when, and what order the solution is gone through.

Bombe[0] is to my mind the definitive exploration of this concept. The tagline is "Minesweeper, but you only solve each situation once", which you do by writing these kinds of deduction rules with a fairly painful visual programming language. (You can't write an invalid rule: the game will detect the logic error and present you with a counter-example.)

You then let the computer churn through it's list of 100k scenarios idle-game style, until you bump into a board that can't be solved with the rules you provided, and you have to figure out what new rules to write.

As the game progresses, you'll unlock ways of parameterizing the rules in various ways, as well as various variant rules.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2262930/Bombe/

I looked at the code for this once. It's sort of a hack. It generates a random puzzle, tries to solve it with a deterministic backtracking(IIRC) solver that detects situations where it's stuck. If it is stuck, it shifts some mines around in the place where the solver got stuck, according to some heuristics, and keeps solving. It keeps doing this until the entire puzzle has been solved, verifying that the puzzle can be solved without any guesswork.

I will second the recommendation. As someone who's wasted too many hours on minesweeper, it radically changes the game. Because I know there's a logical solution, I'm able to find patterns that I never found in the original, because I'd often assume it was just one of those guesswork situations. It's similar to how chess puzzles are easier than an equivalent position during a game. Because you know there's a neat solution, you're more willing to put in the legwork of searching for it. Learned a lot about the game simply by playing Simon's version.

> anyone who likes puzzles on their phone

it's also available on windows and android - very good.

I made something like this a while back: https://github.com/g-rocket/minesweeper

Unfortunately it doesn't have proper controls and cell sizes (doesn't expand to the screen, so remain small), so it's easy to mistap on a wrong cell or mistap instead of mishold. Basically, controls aren't optimized for a touch screen

Do you mean the first screenshot of Windows Minesweeper (the left half of ems02.png)?

Could you explain how? I haven't played a huge amount of Minesweeper, but I can't see how that can be solved without risk/luck.

Thank you. I didn't see that!

Yes, that's right. I'll have to update my blog with additional information about this. Thank you!

Apart from the mine theme (and punishing you by putting in extra mines), that sounds like Hexcells. Very reminiscent of minesweeper, and you never have to guess.