How do football squares work?
Football squares is a 10×10 grid game: 100 squares, each row and column assigned a random digit 0–9. You win when the last digit of each team's score matches your square at scoring checkpoints — usually each quarter.
How is a football squares board set up?
A squares board is a 10×10 grid of 100 squares. One team is assigned the columns and the other team the rows. Players claim squares — usually buying them at a fixed price like $5 or $10 each — before any numbers exist on the board. That ordering matters: nobody knows which digits their square will get while they're choosing, which is what keeps the game fair.
Once the board is full (or at kickoff), the digits 0 through 9 are drawn in random order across the columns and again down the rows. Every square now corresponds to exactly one combination — say, home team 7, away team 3. On a Blocklock squares board this draw happens automatically on the server the moment the 100th square is claimed or the game kicks off, whichever comes first, and the digits can never be redrawn.
How do you win at football squares?
Take the last digit of each team's current score and find the square where those two digits intersect — that square wins the checkpoint. If the score is 17–13, the winning square is 7 on one axis and 3 on the other. Most pools pay at the end of each quarter: four winners across Q1, halftime, Q3, and the final score.
The other popular format pays on every score change, not just quarters. In that version the 0–0 square wins at kickoff, and a touchdown produces two winners — one when the score posts at 6, another when the extra point makes it 7. A typical NFL game has 8–12 score changes, so an every-score pool spreads far more wins around the group. Blocklock supports both formats and notifies each winner by push notification the moment their square hits.
What do the numbers mean in football squares?
The numbers 0–9 along each axis are the last digit of each team's score. Football scoring makes some digits far more valuable than others: touchdowns with extra points move scores in 7s and field goals in 3s, so 0, 3, and 7 dominate real outcomes. Across 7,362 NFL games since 2000, the single best square — home 0, away 7 — has won the final score 3.7% of the time, nearly four times what an average square would win by chance.
Because digits are drawn after squares are claimed, nobody can aim for the good numbers — every square costs the same and luck decides who lands on 0-7. That's the whole appeal: a squares pool needs zero football knowledge to win.
How much does it cost to play squares?
Whatever the group decides — common boards run $1, $5, $10, or $20 per square, making the full pot $100 to $2,000. The pool itself typically splits the pot across the four quarters, with the final score worth the most (a 20/20/20/40 split is standard).
Blocklock is a free squares board — it runs the grid, the digit draw, live scores, and winner notifications, and never touches the money. The commissioner collects and pays out however the group already handles cash, usually Venmo. Players don't create accounts; they tap a shared link, put a name on a square, and they're in.
Free · No accounts for players · Blocklock never touches the money