Dots and Boxes Rules: Interactive Tutorial for Beginners
Dots and Boxes takes a minute to learn and much longer to play well. This tutorial teaches the rules on the board you play on, and the two ideas that win most games. You play Blue.
Step 1 of 5
Dots and lines
The board has 25 dots, which make 16 boxes. Blue moves first, then Red. On your turn, draw one line between two dots side by side, across or down, never diagonally. Here Blue draws a line, then Red does. Each line takes its player's colour.
Claim a box and go again
Draw the fourth side of a box and it is yours: it fills with your colour and scores a point. Then you draw again, for as long as each line completes a box. Red's last line, between the two starred boxes, gave both a third side.
Your move
Claim both starred boxes.
Never draw the third side
A box with three sides is a free point for whoever moves next. So don't draw the third side of a box. Every box here has two sides or fewer, and most of the lines left would give one a third.
Your move
Draw a line that gives no box its third side.
Take the whole chain
When the safe lines run out, the boxes left form chains: the line that completes one box is the third side of the next. Red had no safe line and opened the bottom row. Its left box has three sides, and taking it hands you the next.
Your move
Claim all four boxes in the bottom row.
Who wins?
The game ends when all 16 boxes are claimed. Each box is one point, and lines score nothing. This game has just ended. Count the boxes.
What you learned
- Blue moves first. Draw one line between two neighbouring dots per turn.
- Draw a box's fourth side to claim it, then draw again.
- Never draw a third side: the next player takes the box.
- When a chain opens, you can take all of it in one turn. The chains lessons show when to stop two short.
- When all 16 boxes are claimed, more boxes wins. Eight each is a draw.
In this course
Unit 1The rules
- Dots and Boxes Rules: Interactive Tutorial for Beginners
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