How to play football squares
The rules take a minute to learn and one of them does all the work. Here is the order things happen in, how a quarter is settled, and the part nobody mentions — that the digits are not equally good and cannot be made so.
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.
The order of play
Print the grid with no digits on it and write both team names along the edges. Pass it round until every cell has a name in it; one person can hold as many cells as they like. Agree beforehand what happens to any cell still empty when the game starts, because that conversation is much harder to have at half-time.
Draw the digits only once the sheet is full. Nought to nine along the top for one team, nought to nine down the side for the other, each in its own random order. Write them on, or print the drawn sheet, and pin it somewhere everybody can see.
At each break, take the last digit of each team's score. Find that digit in the top strip, find the other team's in the side strip, and follow the column and the row until they cross. The name in that cell has won the break. Four breaks, four winners — sometimes the same person twice.
Reading a score onto the grid
Only the final digit is used, so a 24–17 scoreline is read as 4 and 7. This catches people out on high-scoring games: 34–27 pays exactly the same cell as 24–17, and 4–7 would too.
Which team goes along the top has to be settled before the draw and written on the sheet, because 21–7 and 7–21 are different cells. On a grid that looks symmetrical, reading the score onto the wrong axis is an easy mistake and it pays entirely the wrong person.
Overtime counts toward the final score, not toward a fifth break, unless your group has agreed otherwise in advance. Agreeing in advance is the entire trick.
Why some numbers are much better than others
Points arrive in threes and sevens, so the totals that build up over a game land far more often on some final digits than on others. A cell holding 0, 3, 7 or 4 will be in contention repeatedly; one holding 2, 5 or 9 may spend the whole afternoon out of reach.
This cannot be corrected by the draw, and it is not evidence that the draw was crooked. It is the shape of the scoring system showing through, and it is the same on every squares grid ever printed. The only honest response is to say so out loud before people put their names down.
Some groups respond by paying a smaller prize at the first break and a larger one at the end, on the grounds that the last digit of a finished game is the one worth waiting for. Others rotate the digits every quarter. Both are reasonable; neither makes a 2 into a 7.
Common questions
What are the best numbers in football squares?
0, 3, 7 and 4 are the strong ones, because scores accumulate in threes and sevens and those are the digits the running totals keep landing on. 2, 5 and 9 are the weak ones. No draw can even this out — it comes from how the sport scores.
What happens if a square has no name in it?
Whatever you agreed before kick-off. Common answers are that the organiser covers it, that it rolls into the next break, or that unsold cells are struck out and redrawn. What matters is that it was decided while nobody knew which cells would win.
Who wins if the score is 17-14?
The cell where the 7 column meets the 4 row — 17 ends in 7 and 14 ends in 4. Check which team you put along the top before you read it, because the 4 column against the 7 row is a different cell and a different person.