Football squares
Print the grid blank, let everyone write their name in a square, then draw the numbers. The draw happens in your browser and prints its seed on the sheet, so anybody who was not standing there can reproduce it.
The grid
| Home →↓ Away | 4 | 5 | 0 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | ||||||||||
| 7 | ||||||||||
| 0 | ||||||||||
| 1 | ||||||||||
| 3 | ||||||||||
| 8 | ||||||||||
| 9 | ||||||||||
| 5 | ||||||||||
| 4 | ||||||||||
| 6 |
Draw seed 481625 · each square covers 1 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.
Sell the squares first, draw the numbers second
This is the only rule of a squares pool that actually matters, and it is the one a printable grid can get wrong on your behalf. While the numbers are hidden, every square is worth the same and people write their names anywhere. The moment the digits are visible, the good squares go to whoever is standing nearest the sheet and everyone who arrives later is buying the leftovers.
So the sheet has two states and it starts in the first one. An undrawn grid has every cell, every gridline and both team names already on it — the same shape it will have at kick-off — and empty strips where the digits will go. Fill the cells at the office, in the pub, over a week. Only when the last one is spoken for do you press the button.
A pool that draws first is not a pool. It is a queue, and it will be the reason somebody stops joining next year.
A draw somebody can check afterwards
Every draw is made from a seed — a six-digit number that is printed on the sheet next to the grid. Type the same seed on any device and the same digits land in the same places. That is a much stronger thing to be able to say than "I clicked the button and this is what came out", and it costs nothing.
Underneath, the digits are shuffled with Fisher–Yates: walk the list from the end and swap each position with a uniformly chosen one at or before it. The shorthand most generators use instead is a sort with a random comparator, which produces measurably uneven results — some orderings come up several times more often than others. On a grid with money on it, that is worth the extra six lines of code.
Nothing is uploaded. The grid, the names and the draw exist only in the page you are looking at, which is also why the seed is the only way to reproduce it — there is no copy on a server to fetch.
Send the grid round without an account
The button under the sheet copies a link that contains the entire grid — the size, the names, the team labels, the draw and its seed. Open it on any device and the same sheet is there. Nobody signs up, nothing expires, and there is no pool sitting on a server waiting to be forgotten about.
It works because everything after the # in a web address is never sent to the server. That part of the link is handled entirely by the browser it is opened in, which means a sheet full of your colleagues' names does not touch our logs, our analytics, or anybody else's. We could not read your grid if we wanted to.
The practical limit is length: a hundred full names makes a long link. Short names or initials keep it comfortably inside what a message will carry, and a typical twenty-five-square pool comes out at a couple of hundred characters.
Not every square is worth the same, and the sheet says so
No shuffle can change this: football scores are built out of threes and sevens, so the last digits they reach are not evenly spread. Squares carrying a 0, 3, 7 or 4 come in far more often than squares carrying a 2, 5 or 9. That is a fact about the sport rather than about the draw.
Most printed grids stay quiet about it, which leaves a first-time player believing the square they were handed is as good as anybody else's. The grid here shades the lucky digits once they are drawn, so the person holding 2 and 5 finds out on the day rather than in the fourth quarter.
Common questions
How do football squares work?
Everyone writes their name in a square while the grid is blank. Then digits 0 to 9 are drawn at random across the top and down the side. At the end of each quarter, take the last digit of each team's score, find the column and row carrying those digits, and the name where they cross wins that quarter.
When should the numbers be drawn?
After every square is taken and never before. Numbers drawn first turn the grid into a race for the good squares, and the arithmetic of which squares are good is well known enough that people really will pick them.
Can I share the grid with people who are not in the room?
Yes — copy the link under the sheet and send it. The whole grid rides inside the link itself, so whoever opens it sees the same squares, names and numbers. No account, and nothing is stored here.
Does this site run the pool or hold any money?
No. It prints a sheet of paper. There is no account, no entry fee, no pot and no settlement — whatever your group agrees to play for is written on the sheet with a pen and handled between the people in the room.
Do I have to print it?
No, but it is built for it. The grid prints edge to edge with the navigation and headings stripped out, on Letter or A4, and the same page fills in on screen if you would rather pass a laptop around.