How Squares work

What's a Squares game?

A 10x10 grid, 100 boxes, one game. Everyone claims boxes before kickoff, one or ten, however many they want. When the grid fills, every row and column gets a random digit from 0 to 9: rows for one team, columns for the other. From then on your box is a pair of numbers, and you want the score to land on them.

At the end of each quarter, take the last digit of each team's score. The box where those two digits meet wins. Chiefs 24, 49ers 17? Last digits 4 and 7, and whoever holds (4, 7) is up out of their seat.

That's the whole game. No sports knowledge required, which is exactly why it works: your friend who couldn't name a single player is now living and dying on a field goal.

Step by step

Pick a grid size to see how it plays. The 10x10 example is $10 a box with reverse winners on. The 5x5 example is $20 a box.

Why the numbers are random (and why that's the point)

Numbers are assigned after every box is claimed, at random. Nobody picks 7-0. Nobody gets stuck with 2-5 on purpose either.

One thing to know: once the numbers land, they are not all equal. Football scores love 0, 3, and 7, and they avoid 2 and 5. That's not a flaw, it's the sweat. You claim your boxes blind, the numbers hit, and half the room groans while the other half starts doing math. If skill decided it, the die-hards would win every week. Random numbers mean the person who has never watched a game has exactly the same shot as the guy with three fantasy teams.

How you win

One winner per period. Football has four quarters; basketball pays by quarter or half depending on the league, and your host sets which periods pay. The same box can win more than once. A 21-14 game at the half and 21-14 at the final pays the same box twice, and that person will bring it up for years.

Reverse winners are your host's call. Turn them on and the reverse box (your numbers flipped, 4-7 becomes 7-4) also pays, at a smaller cut. Twice the outcomes to root for, and the one rule that reliably makes someone yell at a meaningless extra point.

The "You win if" feature

You don't have to do the digit math. During the game, your box tells you exactly what has to happen: "You win if the Chiefs score a field goal." "One score away." Every box gets a live line like that, so there are no dead minutes where nobody knows why they're watching. This is the part that keeps the room loud in the third quarter of a blowout.

Payouts

A good split pays every quarter something, a bit more at the half, and the most at the final. The 5x5 example above pays 12.5%, 25%, 12.5%, and 50%.

Paying out is the part hosts dread, so we made it one tap. Winners add their Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App, and when the game goes final you get a button with their name and the amount filled in. Same for collecting: every player sees your handle and a pay button the moment they claim a box.

Not playing for money? Squares work just as well for bragging rights: trash talk is always free.

The Open Box Bonus

Grid didn't fill? No more cancelling. Turn on the Open Box Bonus and when an empty box wins a quarter, that payout goes into a bonus pot drawn at random among box owners after the game. More boxes, better odds, and a half-empty grid stays worth playing.

Squares for a cause

Plenty of Squares are run for a team, a race, or an office cause. Set the box price, decide up front how the pot splits between winners and the cause, and say so in the description so everyone knows before they claim a box. The game does the rest: people who'd never buy a ticket will happily take a box, and they get four quarters of rooting for their trouble. Check your local rules on charity games before you run one; they vary by state.

Here's one way to split a $1,000 pot with a cause:

How a Square plays out

Tuesday: you make the Square and text the link to the group chat. By Thursday, 60 boxes are claimed and someone's aunt has ten of them. Saturday night it fills, the numbers land, and the chat lights up with people negotiating trades nobody will honor. Sunday, 3:40 left in the second quarter: a field goal makes it 13-10, and the guy who complained about getting 3-0 goes quiet, then very loud. The third quarter is a defensive slog, which one box owner is calling the greatest quarter of football ever played. The final gun hits 27-24. You tap once per winner, everyone's paid before the postgame interviews end, and somebody's already asking about next week.

That's the product. The spreadsheet version of this ends with you doing math during the two-minute warning.