Back to Square One: phrase from a football pitch, or a board game?
“Back to square one!” is a phrase widely used to indicate starting again after a failure or dead end. But its origins are in dispute, although there are two prime candidates.
One common theory is that it originates from early BBC football commentaries on the radio. To help the listener picture the scene, the pitch was divided up into a grid of imaginary squares that the listener could have to hand on a chart as the game was described on air. A period of play could involve the ball going “back to square one”. However, this derivation seems unlikely. There were only eight squares, and number one was not especially significant.
The most likely source of the phrase, first occurring in print in 1952, is actually the traditional game of snakes and ladders, whereby an unlucky throw of the dice can land a player right back at the start again, by sliding down a snake.
Further reading
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