Implement Minesweeper click-to-reveal expansion

Q: Implement Minesweeper click-to-reveal expansion

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to implement grid-based data structures, state management, and flood-fill style expansion logic for Minesweeper, including correct handling of mine revelation and idempotent re-click behavior.

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Question

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Problem

Implement a playable text-based Minesweeper engine.

You are given a board size and mine locations (or a mine count with a deterministic placement method). Implement initialization and the click operation.

Setup

Board has height rows and width columns.
Some cells contain mines.
Each non-mine cell stores the number of adjacent mines (8-directional neighbors).

Click behavior

Implement click(r, c) with these rules:

If (r, c) contains a mine, mark it as revealed and the game is over.
Otherwise reveal (r, c) .
If the revealed cell’s adjacent-mine count is 0 , recursively/iteratively reveal all connected zero-cells and their boundary non-zero neighbors (standard Minesweeper expansion).
Re-clicking an already revealed cell should be a no-op.

I/O / Interaction

Provide functions/classes so a user can “play” via repeated clicks.
Visualization can be done using print (e.g., hidden cells shown as # , revealed numbers as 0-8 , mines as * only when revealed).

Constraints

1 ≤ width, height ≤ 200 (assume up to 40,000 cells).
Mines can be up to width*height - 1 .
Your expansion must avoid stack overflow (i.e., recursion depth issues) on large boards.

What to deliver

Data structures for the board state.
Efficient click expansion implementation.
A simple loop/demo showing the board after each click.