Patashu's Beginner Bombe Guide

From making your first rule to receiving your first variable

Single Region Deductions

After leaving the tutorial, this is the first thing you'll see:


Bombe is about teaching the computer to play Minesweeper, and we do so by making rules. Click on one of the 0 regions to open the region inspector, and double click to open the rule constructor:


Because a 0 region of size 2 always has no bombs inside of it, we can mark it as 'clear'. Click the broom icon, then click the bottom right of the 2:


This is correct and we could save it, but we can generalize it a little bit more. Click the ? ('Don't Care') and replace the 2 with a ?. Now save ✅ this rule and watch the computer to get to work.


Now we have a couple more rules to make: A 1 region of size 1 is always bombs, same for a 2 region of size 2, and so on. Make these rules as they come up.


While the computer is solving puzzles for you, let's look at some UI elements: (Future Patashu update: Some of these may be locked behind 50-100ish solves depending on when in the timeline you're playing Bombe.)


* Top left: The pause menu.
* Top right: If you need to re-visit the tutorial.
* The slider: Game speed. At the far left, it's paused. At the far right, the game will create regions and apply rules as fast as your CPU will allow.
* The overlapping rectangles: This is where you go to check what rules you've made. You can add, update and delete rules, sort them, re-order their IDs, and see how well they're performing (number of activations vs number of cells they contributed to clearing).
* The location and %: This is the level select for this tile. It'll let you see individually all 200 levels in this tile, and you can click on one to play it even if you've solved it before. The % is a measure of the puzzle's difficulty (higher is easier). More specifically: 'It is player minutes with level passed over total player minutes for that game mode.'
* The trophy: This is how many puzzles you've solved. If you click it, it'll show the leaderboards.

Two Region Deductions

It's all smooth sailing until we get to the 20th puzzle. We need to make a rule that uses both of these regions simultaneously, so double click them both to go to the rule creator.


Reasoning about this logically, the 5 region of size 6 can't put all its bombs outside of the overlap, so it must put at least one bomb in the overlap. And because the overlap is a 1 region, it CAN'T have 2 bombs! So all the cells only in the 5 must be bombs, and all the cells only in the 1 must be cleared. In this case, it's slightly better to mark the bombs because those must exist, whereas the 1 might not extend outside of the 5 - so complete the rule like so:


You might have noticed that you can't replace the region of size 4 with a ?, because the ✅ turns into 'Illogical'. You can mouse over it to pop out 'Why Illogical' - the computer will provide a counterexample where your rule is invalid. In this case, the 5 could just put all its mines outside the overlap in an arbitrarily large region, and your deduction would be false. Note that this means Bombe will not allow you to make an invalid rule, only a more or less useful one!


This won't solve the puzzle yet, so let's make one more rule - if a 1 is strictly contained inside a larger 1, the larger 1's outside is cleared. This one will come up very often!


Several more cases of 2 region overlap will come up in the following puzzles - solve them similarly.

Creating New Regions

Here's the first puzzle that might be a stumper:


We can solve it by just double clicking all three regions and marking the cells we want to clear, but that won't generalize very well. Let's be smarter about this - double click just the 2 and the 1.


We know that there's one bomb in the 2/1 overlap, which means the 2 has only one bomb left to put in the outside. We can create a new 1 clue by clicking '1' from the bottom of the rule constructor and clicking the bottom right of the region(s) we want the 1 clue to apply in:


Then apply the usual ?s and we're good to go:


Creating this new 1 region allows our previous 2 region rules relating to 2 and 1 clues to solve it.

You've now solved 100 puzzles, congratulations! This puzzle can be solved by similar logic, see if you can figure it out on your own.


You also now have the ability to visit other levels. As levels go across, they increase in complexity of given clues, and as levels go down, they increase in size. Completing 100 puzzles in a level unlocks the levels below and to the right of it (not upwards or leftwards, and you can't complete 50 puzzles above and 50 puzzles to the left or anything like that).


You can also double click on a level, or even an entire shape, to attempt every puzzle without stopping and waiting for you if one is unsuccessful. You can do this to make progress on locks faster!

Three Region Deductions

Just one puzzle left in hex row 1 column 1 to solve. This one legitimately needs all three regions to solve, so let's throw them in the rule constructor and think about it.


(Actually, THIS time it can be solved with only 2 region rules. But the generalized version of this deduction requires all 3 regions and shows up all over the place, so I still recommend this route of understanding.)

Where the two 1s overlap, if we had a bomb here, then all the other cells in 1s would be cleared. This means the 3 would only have 2 cells left, but it still needs to place 3 bombs - this is invalid. Therefore, mark this cell as clear. Fill it out with ?s everywhere (except the 2) and we have a useful rule!


If you go down to hex row 2 column 1 there'll be a similar 3 region deduction to make - you know what to do.


Keep going, and we have another three region deduction to make... or do we?


The naive approach is to just mark a bomb:


But you can actually solve this as a clever series of 2 region deductions. To see what they'll be, let's take a brief detour into hex row 1 column 2 so you have a basic understanding of what's about to happen -

Plus and Minus Clues

We'll get some basic ones out of the way, first - a 0- of any size, just like a 0, is clear:


And N+ in N is all bombs, so we'll make all such rules and keep going until something interesting happens:


Like this! Interesting - if a 1+ is contained inside of a 1-, we know it is actually a 1, and the outside has no mines. My suggestion would be to write these rules in order:


Similarly, rules like this confirm the 3+ is actually a 3, because there's no room for 4+ bombs. And similarly a 1+ in a 1 is actually a 1.


Don't be intimidated - this is just a 2 region deduction. Do you see how the 1- and 2+ interact? In general, a lot of rules you wrote pertaining to regions of size N still work when some of the regions are N+ or N-, but not always, so you'll end up writing them out again but with the + or - version. But this work will pay off in the future!


Now we come to this puzzle which WILL intimidate. Do I have to just write out a 4 region deduction? Let's see if we can come up with something smarter now that we're thinking plus-minusly.


First, write this rule: 'if two 2s overlap, and the second 2 has only 1 cell outside, then the first two must have 1 or less bombs in its outside'.


Now we can write a slightly different version of a familiar three region deduction - This cell can't be a mine because then the 2+ can't even be a 2 anymore. It works whether zero, one or both of the 1s are 1-s, and the bigger region can be lots of different things, too. If only we could write its most general form and be done forever... oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?


Your rules should now be able to solve a bunch of puzzles. Here's one in particular I think is worth pointing out - you could just mark the cell as a mine, but if you think about it a little more, you can generalize it THIS much, to say 'the rest of 2 is a 1+'. And it just so happens a 1+ of size 1 is a bomb, so it solves this puzzle all the same!


A few more rules, and you should now have row 1 column 2 starred - celebrate! Ok, celebration's over. Now let's go back to that 'three region deduction' from the last section and look at it again...


First, write this rule: 'if a 1 and a 3 overlap, the outside of the 3 is a 2+'


This should, using your previoius rules, mark a mine.

Were you expecting it to solve? Well, don't fret - it's STILL not a 3 region deduction. Try this: 'if a 1 and a 2 overlap, the outside of the 2 is a 1+'.

Now in combination with the rules you wrote for plus and minus clues, this is a solve! Now only one puzzle remains...

...The final boss of the beginner Bombe experience.

A Five Region Deduction?!?

Uh oh, what do I do? I just wanted to finish hex row 2 column 1 but the game wants me to make a *five region* deduction?? I can't even put more than four regions in a rule! Don't fear, it IS possible. We just need to break it down into something more manageable.


First, let's figure out what the deduction we want to make but can't express is - let's imagine that exactly one cell where a 3 and a 1 overlap is a bomb. One side of a 1 being a bomb forces the other side to be a clear, which forces the other side to be a bomb, which forces the other side to be clear, which... Or in other words, it is a 'wire' that sends a 'signal' from one end to the other. Even vs odd matters - At the end of a chain of an even number of 1s, both ends are either both bombs or both not bombs (they are a '0/2' region). At the end of a chain of an odd number of 1s, exactly one end is a bomb (they are a '1' region).

So, let's write the basic case down - if we have two 1s overlap, then their ends collectively form a 0/2 region. (As a reminder, after selecting a clue type from the bottom of the rule constructor, you can click the bottom right of two different regions to say the clue should overlap both these regions. Oh, I never mentioned it, but you can also bomb or sweep multiple regions in a single rule - but a rule can't do more than one 'action', so pick the more important one or make multiple rules.)


We just barfed a bunch of 0/2s over our beautiful game state - these are all technically correct, and we could use one of them to write a four region rule, but let's go a little further and see if we can't do it in less.


We could write the 'if three 1s chain, then their ends are a 1' rule and the 'if four 1s chain, then their ends are a 0/2' rule, but let's be a bit more explicit about it. Write the following rule: 'if a 1 and 0/2 overlap, their outsides are collectively a 1/3'. (Feel free to prove to yourself why this is the case.)


Gross, our puzzle has even more stuff in it! Don't fret yet - this is part of the bombe experience. First, notice that when a 1/3 is in a region of size 2 or less, it's actually just a 1 - so write a rule that generates the 1, and then write a rule to hide the 1/3 if it overlaps a 1 exactly. (If you want to add a region to a new or duplicated rule, you can double click the clue in the bottom of the rule constructor.) (To make a visibility rule, click the no eye icon and then click the bottom right of the already existing region. If you don't have access to visibility regions yet, double click the hex icon to solve all the puzzles you can and it should be unlocked.)


And with those rules in place, your other existing rules should solve the puzzle for you, since it just turned into a 1 strictly inside of a 3! Nice!

Double click the hex icon to run your rules on all puzzles - you won't be able to solve many column 3 puzzles yet, but you should get about 2.2k solves total. The choice of what to do next is up to you - but I'd go down column 3 and make rules for everything easy, and then column 4 likewise, and that should get you to 3-4k solves. Then you can go to square and try to solve everything, making rules for situations that never came up before, and you'll get to 5k solves, 6k solves and beyond. Good luck and have fun!

What Now?

Now that we've covered the basics, the goal of Bombe is to solve more and more and more puzzles.

By double clicking on a folder of puzzles, Bombe will automatically run each puzzle within it and try to solve it. So every time you write some new rules, you can sweep the entirety of Hex, of Square, and so on, to see how many more puzzles you solved.

At around 2000 puzzles solved, you'll unlock the first variable, X, which will drastically simplify your ruleset. For example, instead of writing 'when there's a 2 clue of size 2, bomb', 'when there's a 3 clue of size 3, bomb' and so on, you can write 'when there's an X clue of size X, bomb' and save several rules. A few thousand puzzles solved later, you'll unlock Y, which lets you simplify your two region rules in similar fashion, and so on all the way up to five variables. Just think about how your rules generalize - it's a lot of fun.

Another important feature to look forward to are Robots, which will automatically try to solve puzzles on other threads while you do whatever you want to, letting you blow through puzzles much faster.

Some Parting Thoughts

Before we conclude and leave the rest up to you, let's think about + and - clues. We noticed in previous chapters that some rules could be written with an exact or + clue, or with an exact or - clue, or with a lot of combinations of those. It seems annoying to have to write all the possible such variations. What if we didn't have to?

Simply make all of the following rules, and hopefully you've unlocked x by now - an x produces its corresponding x+ and x- and hides them. (and make sure you don't have rules trashing them 'for being redundant')

Now whenever you write a rule involving a 1 or an x, you can test if it still works if it's 1+ or 1- or x+ or x-, and if so you can happily use it knowing that it will exist and won't be trashed. Sometimes you DO want to trash regions in Bombe (because they're worthless, or redundant, or for performance reasons), but it's often worth thinking about 'what redundant information can I generate in order to keep my number of rules minimized while maximizing their generality' as you progress deeper into the meta layers of understanding required for later unlocks.

There are many more tricks to learn in Bombe. You can try to figure them out on your own, and you can also join the Bombe Discord server (the link is in-game) if you want to ask for help or share your findings. Happy Bombeing!

One more thing - if you enjoy Minesweepering by hand go for it, but if you become exhausted of it don't be afraid to use the hint button. The REAL challenge in this game is 'what rule should I even write', and it only gets harder to answer the deeper into the game you are.

One ONE more thing - if you get really stuck around 2 to 3 variables and aren't sure what the clever, generalized rules you're not thinking of are, check out chaotic_iak's excellent Bombe rules document. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EONe9qVCurkPPK6yk7lX6PC4ld4Nkz6JUe02mN16PXQ/edit Don't copy and paste every rule straight up into your game - use it as a categorization scheme for 'kinds of Bombe logic' and use it to realize what kinds of holes you have in your understanding that you can now try to fill.

[Patashu]

@Bosuonparedo: It's basically because the sizes of those regions don't matter. If a 3 clue has only 2 cells to its own, then it needs to place 1 or more mines in regions overlapping one or both of the 1 clues. But if a mine finishes both 1 clues, then you just have a 3 clue in 2 cells, which is impossible to satisfy. Therefore that mine cannot be placed. Therefore you can sweep that region. Since I didn't make any claims on sizes of regions except the '2', all the other region sizes can be ?.

[Bosuonparedo]

In the Three Region Deduction section, why can we set all those things to don't cares? I am not seeing it.

[KellenT]

"A Five Region Deduction?!?" is actually insane, how do you even think of that.

[rainedoescode]

Thanks for this, I has unlocked the first variable but was struggling to understand how to use it. Now it makes perfect sense. Time to wrack my brains for solving algorithms.

[Joryho]

This game is so amazingly unique and cool, but holy CRAP is it confusing. Combined with the very minimalist tutorial and the overall lack of explaining things, it's difficult as all hell just to get started. Thanks for this though, I'm kinda thinking better about it now.

[Generator]

This game is the most genious puzzle game I've witnessed. But jesus the amount of critical thinking, it's approaching math major levels of planning and thinking out lmao

[Patashu]

@BlazingImp77151: Yeah. The idea is to not mark x+ in x of size x (since it'll just get marked as bombs), but I think due to priority it won't actually matter, so maybe the rule would be faster CPU wise if you mark x+ in x of size ?.

[BlazingImp77151]

in the last image, why do you have a rule for if anything is in an x+1 region to mark it as x+1+? wouldnt having just x there work the same?

[Patashu]

It would indeed be illogical to mark just the left side or just the right side as a 1/3. But the rule makes a SINGLE 1/3 region that covers BOTH the left and right side simultaneously. This is a very useful rule because it often collapses the information content of two regions into one, allowing other two and three region rules to act on this information. Rules are all about restating things you know in a more useful format for playing Minesweeper.

[Marpfie]

I get that if you looked at the two areas as a whole, in TOTAL you would have 1 or 3 bombs in them, yes. But still it doesn't make sense for the separated ends of the 1-area to have a 1/3. Because inside that there can never be 3