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📦 Dots and Boxes
Join the dots, one line at a time. Close a box and it is yours — and you go again. The paper classic, with the same old trap.
- Up to 4 players
- Party game
- In your browser, free
- With friends or against bots
The rules
A grid of 5×5 dots — that is 16 boxes and 40 possible lines. On your turn you draw one line between two neighbouring dots. If that line closes a box, the box takes your colour and you go again.
When all 16 boxes are closed, whoever has the most wins.
The trap of the game (and it is the game)
Drawing the third side of a box hands that box to your opponent. Early on there are lines to spare and nobody has to do it; midway the board closes up and a moment arrives when every available move gives something away.
That is where the match is decided: not by who closes more boxes, but by who is forced to open the first chain. Handing over a chain of five boxes loses you the game even if you were ahead until then.
The move that separates people who know
When you are forced to give up a chain, there is a classic defence: instead of closing every box in the chain your opponent just handed you, close all but two and draw a line through the middle of those — handing the turn back.
You give up two boxes and force your opponent to open the next chain, which is normally bigger. On a board this small, that single move usually decides the match.
Against the bot
The bot follows three priorities, in this order: close a box if it can; otherwise play a line that gives nothing away; otherwise play anything. It never sacrifices two boxes to hand the turn back — so, at the end of a match, the move above works against it with almost embarrassing regularity.
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