Dots and boxes printables
36 printable dots and boxes sheets: lattices from 16 boxes up to 300, giant grids for small hands, two, four or six games on one page, score panels for two, three or four players, sheets with the rules and a finished example printed beside them, and seasonal bordered versions.
36 printable sheets ·
Checked and published by 
Nora Quill
Board sizes, from 16 boxes to 300
How many boxes are in play is how long the game lasts, and it is the only thing separating these seven sheets. A 4 by 4 grid is sixteen boxes and about five minutes with a small child. A 15 by 20 grid is three hundred boxes and will fill a rainy afternoon between two adults who are taking it seriously. Every one of them prints a single lattice with the dots spaced far enough apart to draw a line between two of them without touching the next.
Large print sheets, where a box is 28 to 57mm
This is not the same facet as board size. These sheets keep the grid deliberately short so the millimetres can go up: a box on the giant crayon sheet measures fifty seven millimetres across and the dots are printed fat enough to see from the other side of a table. That is what a hand which is still learning to steer a pencil between two points needs, and it is also what makes the game workable for anyone who wants a bigger target to aim at.
Two, four or six games on one page
A game of dots and boxes ends, and then somebody wants another one. These sheets carry two, four or six grids on the same page, each inside its own light frame and numbered, because six lattices printed side by side with an ordinary gap read as one enormous board and nobody can see where game one stops. One of them puts a dashed fold line down the middle so the sheet tears or folds into two.
Score panels for two, three and four players
Dots and boxes is not a two player game by nature: it works for however many people are round the table, and the only thing that has to change is where they keep score. These sheets print a panel under the grid with a row for each player, a small square for the letter they will write inside every box they close, a line for their name and a line for the final count. Two of them also carry a name and date line at the top.
Sheets with the rules and a finished game on them
Somebody looking up how to play is a different visitor from somebody who already knows and just wants paper. These five print the three rules across the top, and four of them print a completed game beside the rules as a worked example, with the score written underneath. That example is not a drawing: the site plays a real game out on a nine box grid, obeying the rule that closing a box earns another turn, and the score printed under it is counted off the boxes you can see.
Seasonal sheets with a decorated border
The same game inside a printed frame with a motif in each corner: pumpkins for Halloween, trees for Christmas, hearts for Valentine, stars, flowers for spring and suns for summer. The border is drawn outside the area the game uses rather than on top of it, so a Halloween sheet is a full sized grid and not a smaller one squeezed to make room for decoration.
What is on this page
Thirty six dots and boxes sheets, every one a free A4 PDF that also prints clean on US Letter. They are not thirty six copies of the same grid. They are grouped by the things that genuinely differ from one sheet to the next: how many boxes are in play, how big those boxes print, how many games fit on the page, how many people the score panel holds, whether the rules are printed on the paper, and whether there is a seasonal border round the outside.
Nothing here needs an account, a watermark comes off nothing, and there is no answer sheet, because an empty lattice of dots has nothing to solve. The sheet is the game.
How dots and boxes is played
Two or more players take turns. On your turn you draw one straight line joining two dots that sit next to each other, up and down or side to side, never diagonally. If your line closes the fourth side of a small square, that box is yours: you write your letter inside it and you go again immediately. That extra turn is the whole game, because a single line can hand over a chain of a dozen boxes in one move. When there is no line left to draw, everybody counts their letters and the most boxes wins.
It takes about twenty seconds to teach and it never plays the same way twice, which is why it survives in the back of exercise books and on restaurant napkins without anybody ever publishing the rules.
Is dots and boxes just luck?
No. Once the open middle is used up, the game turns into arithmetic: the player forced to open a chain gives away every box in it. Strong play means counting chains and deliberately losing a small one to take a bigger one. That is why sixteen boxes is a children's game and three hundred boxes is a genuinely tactical one.
How many boxes should you print
An R by C lattice of dots always yields exactly one fewer box in each direction, so eleven rows of nine dots is an 8 by 10 grid holding eighty boxes. Every sheet on this page states the dots, the boxes and the dot spacing in millimetres, and those numbers are read off the finished page rather than typed in by hand.
- 16 to 25 boxes. Five minutes. A first game for a four or five year old, or a filler while food arrives.
- 48 to 80 boxes. The default. Fifteen to twenty minutes for two players who are paying attention, which is the sweet spot for a classroom or a car.
- 130 to 192 boxes. A long sitting. Chains start mattering here and the counting at the end is real work.
- 300 boxes. The 15 by 20 sheet. This is an afternoon, and it is the one to print when two adults want a game that lasts.
Large print, which is not the same as a small board
Six of these sheets keep the grid deliberately short so the spacing can go up. On the giant crayon sheet the dots sit fifty seven millimetres apart, so each box is nearly six centimetres across and a chunky crayon line between two dots is easy rather than fiddly. The dots themselves are printed fatter on those sheets, up to two and a half millimetres of solid ink, because a faint dot at that scale is a dot a small child cannot aim at.
This matters for two different people. A three or four year old who cannot yet steer a pencil from one point to another gets a game they can actually finish. Anyone who wants a bigger target to aim at, for any reason, gets a version of the same game that does not require a fine nib and good light.
Games per page, and why each one is framed
A game of dots and boxes ends and somebody immediately wants another, so one grid per sheet is the wrong shape for this game. Six of these sheets carry two, four or six grids on one page. Each grid sits inside its own light frame and carries its own number, and that frame is load-bearing rather than decorative: six bare lattices printed side by side with an ordinary gutter read as one enormous board, and nobody can tell where game one stops. One layout puts a dashed fold line down the middle so a single sheet becomes two.
Six more sheets print a score panel under the grid. Dots and boxes is not a two player game by nature, it is a game for however many people are round the table, so those panels come in two, three and four player versions. Each row has a small square for the letter that player will write in every box they close, a line for their name and a line for the final count, which removes the argument at the end of a three player game.
The rules sheets, and the worked example on them
A thousand people a month search for how to play this game rather than for paper to play it on, so five sheets here print the three rules across the top in plain language. Four of those also print a finished game beside the rules, with the score written underneath.
That example is not an illustration somebody drew. The site plays a real game out on a nine box grid, obeying the rule that closing a box earns another turn, then checks that every line has been drawn, that every box has an owner, and that the two scores add up to nine before the sheet is allowed to exist. The score printed under it is counted off the boxes you can see, so a teacher can point at it and be right.
Printing
Choose actual size or 100% rather than fit to page. Every file is laid out as a real A4 page with a 15mm margin, which is also what stops a US Letter printer clipping the edges. Black and white at normal quality is enough and no sheet here needs colour ink. The dots are drawn as solid ink rather than outlines, so they survive draft mode, and no grid on this page is spaced under eleven millimetres, which is the floor for drawing a line between two dots without touching the next one.
If you want the other pencil and paper game for two, the tic tac toe printables carry boards from 3x3 up to 7x7 and pre-filled positions with answers. For one player rather than two, the printable mazes and the printable sudoku both come with solution sheets.
How to use these sheets
- Pick a sheet and press Print. The file is a PDF sized for A4 and Letter paper.
- Print it in black and white at normal quality. None of these sheets need colour ink except the colour by number pages.
- Keep the answer page for yourself, or print it too if you want to check the work later.
Common questions
How many boxes does a dot grid actually give you?
Always one fewer than the dots, in each direction. A lattice of nine dots across and eleven down gives an 8 by 10 grid, which is eighty boxes, because a box needs a dot at each of its four corners. That is why every sheet on this page states both numbers: the dots you can count and the boxes you will end up claiming. It is also worth knowing before you print, since the number of boxes is what decides whether the game lasts five minutes or a whole afternoon.
Can more than two people play dots and boxes?
Yes, and six of these sheets are built for it. The game works for anybody sitting round the table: everybody takes a turn drawing one line, and everybody writes their own letter in the boxes they close. What breaks down with three or four players is keeping score on a scrap of paper, so those sheets print a panel with a row per player, a square for the letter they picked, a line for their name and a line for the final count.
Which sheet should a four year old start with?
The giant crayon grid or one of the other large print sheets. They carry between nine and forty eight boxes with the dots up to fifty seven millimetres apart, so drawing a line from one dot to the next does not need a steady hand yet, and the dots are printed thick enough to aim at. The 4 by 4 and 5 by 5 grids further up the page are the next step, and after that anything with eighty boxes will hold a seven year old.
Do these sheets come with an answer page?
No, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. Dots and boxes has no solution: the sheet is an empty lattice of dots and the game is what two people do with it, so there is nothing to publish an answer to. The one thing printed already solved is the small finished game on the rules sheets, which exists to show what a completed board looks like. If you want a two player game on paper that does come with answers, the pre-filled positions on the tic tac toe printables each have exactly one correct move and their own answer page.
Can I print these for a class or a whole party?
Yes, as many copies as you like, free. Classroom and home use are both covered explicitly. The sheets that suit a group are the ones with two, four or six games on a page, the tournament sized 300 box grid, and the two with a name and date line at the top so a set comes back identifiable. The exact wording is on the licensing page.
Why do my dots come out faint or squashed?
Almost always the scaling. Choose actual size or 100% instead of fit to page, and the dots come back to the spacing printed on the sheet. These files are built as real A4 pages with a 15mm margin so a Letter printer has room too. The dots are solid ink rather than outlines, which is what keeps them visible in draft mode. The how to print guide covers the rest of the settings, and the new and popular printables page is where fresh sets appear first.