25 square football pool
The grid for a small room. Five columns and five rows, two digits on each, and every square covering four of the hundred score endings — four times the chance, a quarter of the squares.
The grid
| Home →↓ Away | 45 | 06 | 72 | 83 | 19 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 | |||||
| 01 | |||||
| 38 | |||||
| 95 | |||||
| 46 |
Draw seed 481625 · each square covers 4 of the 100 score endings
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The digits are drawn
Not left blank for you to write in, and the seed prints on the sheet so anybody can check the draw.
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It says which digits pay
Scores are built out of threes and sevens, so the digits worth having are shaded on the paper.
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Nothing is uploaded
It all runs in your browser, and a shared link carries the sheet in the part a server never receives.
Both axes fold, and the game changes shape
Here the compression is applied twice: two digits per column and two per row. The consequence is not just fewer squares but a coarser game — a square wins on any of four digit combinations, so it can come in on scorelines that look nothing like each other.
That coarseness is the reason this layout suits a small group and suits it well. With twenty-five people the alternative is a hundred-square grid three-quarters empty, and unsold squares winning quarters is a worse problem than a game that resolves in blocks.
It is also the layout where the printed sheet earns its keep. Four digit pairs per square is more than most people will track in their head at half-time, so the grid with the numbers written along both edges is what stops the argument.
Five columns is still a real draw
A common suspicion about the smaller grids is that they are somehow pre-arranged — that the pairs of digits sharing a column were chosen. They were not. The full set of ten digits is shuffled and then cut into fives, so which two digits end up together is as random as which column they land in.
Because both axes are cut this way, a twenty-five square grid has fewer distinct arrangements than a hundred-square one, and two draws are more likely to look similar at a glance. They are still independent draws; the sheet prints its seed either way, so a doubter can rerun it.
Printing a 25-square sheet
25 squares across 5 columns prints landscape on both Letter and A4 without the type shrinking below what a room can read from a few feet away. The page furniture — navigation, headings, this paragraph — is dropped from the printed sheet.
The status line under the grid always states the arithmetic for the sheet you are looking at: 25 squares, digits drawn. each square covers 4 of the 100 possible score endings. That figure is read out of the same code that builds the grid, so it cannot drift away from what is actually printed.
A five-by-five grid leaves enough room to write full names rather than initials, which is worth doing — with four digit pairs attached to every square, a sheet that says who owns what in plain handwriting saves more confusion than it costs ink.
Common questions
How many outcomes does each square cover on a 25 square grid?
Four. Two digits on your column multiplied by two on your row gives four of the hundred possible score endings, which is why a twenty-five square grid pays out just as often overall as a hundred-square one.
Is 25 squares enough for a proper pool?
For a group of about that size, yes — and it beats the alternative. A hundred-square grid with seventy-five squares unsold spends most of the game paying nobody, which is a far more awkward conversation than a coarser draw.
Can I use a 25-square grid for every quarter?
Yes — one draw covers all four quarters by default, and each of the 25 squares covers 4 score endings in every one of them. Redrawing between quarters is a separate option if your group prefers it.