Take turns joining dots with lines, complete the fourth wall of a box to claim it and go again. Whoever owns the most boxes wins.
Dots & Boxes is the timeless pencil-and-paper game played on a grid of dots. Players alternate drawing a single line between two adjacent dots. Whenever your line closes the fourth side of a box, you claim that box and immediately take another turn. When every line is drawn, the player who has captured the most boxes wins.
Dots and boxes was first published in the 19th century by the French mathematician Édouard Lucas — better known for the Lucas numbers and for inventing the Tower of Hanoi — who gave it the considerably better name la pipopipette.
It has collected others since: dots and dashes, game of dots, boxes, pigs in a pen. Like most schoolroom games it spread far faster than any of its names did.
Its depth is disguised by its simplicity. Completing a box earns another turn, which means the endgame is not about claiming boxes but about controlling who is forced to open the next chain — and deliberately declining two boxes to hand the opponent a losing position is the game's central, counterintuitive idea.
Dots & Boxes is a classic territory game first played with paper and pencil over a century ago. This is an original, free browser build with adjustable board sizes, three CPU levels, local two-player, and online matches. No download or sign-up required.