I am sad about the frying pan as well, I added it for a friend and then bugged it 😠It's very fixable though. I think I'll post an updated version to my website even before the judging period is over.
As for the maps difficulty and gnomes count... I looked up the three classic minesweeper fields for reference to see how packed they were. You can also be a bit unlucky with how a minesweeper game starts, so that's always a thing. But I also gave each map a story-based difficulty. (I myself keep failing at the Lighthouse all the time, but it is indeed a story-based thing). And if you keep failing, it will re-add the gnomes you missed back onto the map, so it gets harder :D