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Submitted by Lynne T
Dots and Lines or Dots and Boxes was a fun way to waste time during bus rides, long classes, or anytime you had a willing opponent, paper and a writing utensil. There were a lot of fun strategies for trapping your opponent, although most people just assumed it was luck of the string. Did you know there’s a way to turn this into a gambling game by adding coins to the squares?
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I’ve looked at this like, 8 times, and still can’t figure out how it ended the way it did without player B 1.) going first and 2.) being a dumbass. Either that, or in this version you’re allowed to make more than one line sometimes? What am I missing?
When you make a square, you draw another line. On 8, B completed a square and added a line, A completed the 3 remaining squares.
Yeah, B was just dumb here. They should’ve continued making squares. Instead, they put a line at the bottom left and A completed the squares – unless thedy are playing under some rules that I definitely don’t know!
I would have placed a line in the middle row. That way you’d tie it up.
Nevermind. I can’t count.
Must have played this a million times (on bigger grids) with my brother and sister in the back of the car on vacations. That, of course, was before game-boys, iPods, etc.
My dad taught me this game when i was very little. I’ve got to say, it’s gotten me and my coworkers through many boring company meetings! The bigger the grid, the better! Especially when it gets to the point when it looks like a giant maze and you totally kick the other person’s ass.
I remember a girl in school who loved this game so much. She and I had a notebook with dots on all the pages. She got sick from smelling the Magic Marker she used to make the notebook! I think about her every time I use a marker like that! But to her credit, she usually won…..
So Many great memories! When I was growing up we had a monthly tradition. My Dad would take me and my brother out to eat at “the Black Eyed Pea” and we would draw a giant grid on the back of a paper placemat and have a long 3 way game while we were waiting for our food. Thanks!
I sadly sucked at this game.
We called it Pen the Pig at my school.
We used to call it Foggy Boxes, but most people mistaked it as Foxy Boxes, so it became Foxy Boxes to us.
hah, i still play this sometimes with people when boredom strikes >_>
In dutch it’s called ‘kamertje verhuur’ which means something like room for rent.
It’s pretty epic indeed.
Käsekästchen!
Meaning Cheese Boxes in German.
This has been thoroughly analyzed by Berlenkamp, Conway and Guy in their definitive “Winning Ways”, and found to be a game of immense mathematical subtlety, so it really is as interesting as you thought:
http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Ways-Your-Mathematical-Plays/dp/1568811438/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246332921&sr=1-3
We called it Paddocks and I’d quite forgotten about it until now!
EPIC !
ha, me and a couple of classmates played this game during several of our college classes. got us through many an instrumental analysis lecture!
whoa. i remember my sister and her bf teaching us this, we thought it was so cool since they were in high school. we called it “Boxes.”
you know this game is free on the ipod touch or iphone in the app store. its a lot of fun. and way easier since you dont have to draw so many lines and the setting up of this game took forever
Thanks for the tip! I just went to download it.
Oh god. The hours I spent playing this game with my friends.