About Sunday Squares

I'm an engineer. I love side projects. I love building things, designing solutions, and seeing if I can make something work.

About 12 years ago, I built a dead simple little website just so my friends and I could run a squares pool for the Super Bowl. We were scattered across the east and west coasts, paper grids weren't going to work, and I thought it'd be fun to build something we could all use together. Single purpose, nothing fancy, just enough to get the job done.

And then I'd forget about it for a year.

Every January, like clockwork, I'd get a text from a friend:

"Hey Jon, you doing squares this year?"

And I'd think: Oh shoot.

Then came the scramble. Reintroduce myself to everything I'd built the year before. Figure out if the site was even still running. Update the teams, fix the bugs people mentioned last time, and, because I'm an engineer, inevitably find a few things I wanted to improve while I was in there. I'd get really into it for a few weeks, cram to get it ready, launch it with a few improvements here and there... and then go back to forgetting about it until next January.

This went on for years. Friends would ask if they could host their own squares on the site, and I'd always say no—it was just this little thing I made for us, not something I could really share.

Then my mom asked.

She's been a big supporter and user of the site for years, and she wanted to use it for a marathon fundraiser. I mean... it's my mom.

So I decided to finally make it something real. Not a weekend scramble, but an actual side project I could work on year-round. Something I could really think through, design properly, and build to a level I was actually proud to share with the world. Instead of redoing everything year to year, I could finally focus on building cool features and creating a design that made things simple and easy to understand.

It's cool building things like this.

Two reasons, really.

First, if you've ever hosted a squares pool, you know the deal. One person has to take on way too much:

• Chasing people down for payments
• Tracking who picked what
• Manually updating scores
• Figuring out payouts at the end
• Being the bad guy when someone "forgot" to Venmo

It's a lot. And it turns something that should be fun into a part-time job. I built Sunday Squares for the people who already love running these games for their friends, but hate all the logistics that come with it.

Second, I wanted to help make games more fun for the casual fan. Not everyone at the watch party is super into football, and that's okay. When you've got a square with some random numbers to root for, suddenly that third quarter field goal actually matters to you. It gives everyone at the party a reason to care, even if they couldn't name a single player on the field.

The goal was simple: keep everything that makes squares fun, and get rid of everything that doesn't.

Here's what Sunday Squares handles:

• Live score updates See who's winning each quarter in real-time
• Box tracking Everyone can see their squares on their phone
• Shortest path to victory Shows what plays would make your numbers hit (updated live)
• Venmo/PayPal hooks Makes it easy for the host to collect payments

Here's what it doesn't do: No money flows through Sunday Squares.

That was really important to me. You're playing with your friends, your coworkers, your fantasy league. You don't need some random website in the middle of your money. The host handles all payments and payouts—Sunday Squares just makes the coordination part way easier.

It's a tool for friends who already trust each other. I just wanted to take the busywork off the host's plate.

Sunday Squares works for any NFL, college football, NBA, or college basketball game—not just Super Bowl anymore. It's robust, it's feature-rich, and honestly, it's something I'm really proud of.

You get a free square when you sign up, so it's totally risk-free to try. And yes, it works great for fundraisers too.

If you have any questions, ideas, or just want to say hey, I'm always around.