Play Boxes online free

About Boxes

Boxes is the pencil-and-paper classic that many people first played on the back page of a school notebook, rebuilt for the browser. A grid of dots sits on a pinned paper card. Two players take turns drawing one short line between two neighbouring dots, across or down. Whoever draws the fourth side of a square closes it, stamps it with their own mark and must draw another line straight away. When the last square is closed, the player with the most stamped squares wins.

The standard board is four by four squares, and you can also play a quick three by three or a long six by six game. You can challenge the computer at three levels, pass one device between two people in hot-seat mode, or open an online room and send a friend the link. In online games every line is checked by the server, so both players always see the same board.

Drawing is easy on any screen: tap, click or drag near a gap and the nearest free line lights up as a dashed preview before you let go. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move a cursor from line to line and Enter or Space draws it. The preview also tints any square that your line would leave with three sides, which is exactly the square your opponent will happily take.

The heart of the game is the endgame. Early on, both players draw safe lines that do not give anything away. Sooner or later every remaining line hands over a square, and the board breaks into chains of squares. Try to give away the shortest chains first, and learn the classic trick of declining the last two squares of a long chain: leaving them for your opponent can force them to open the next, bigger chain for you. The hard computer knows this trick, so it is a good teacher.

Boxes is a free browser game on Playdonya. It works on phones, tablets and desktop computers and needs no sign-up.