How to play Dots and Boxes

Coming soon. These are the rules we plan to build; they are settled before the game opens.

The basics

Dots and Boxes is played by 2 to 4 players on a grid of dots. Players take turns to draw one line between two dots next to each other, across or down.

Boxes

• Draw the fourth side of a box and it is yours: your colour fills it, and you draw another line.
• Once every line is drawn, the player with the most boxes wins.

Voice notes

• Tap the messages icon, then Send voice note at the top. The first time, your browser asks to use your microphone.
• Speak for up to 7 seconds and press Send; at 7 seconds it is sent by itself. The ✕ throws it away, but it still counts as your voice note for the round.
• Each player sends one voice note a round, and one player records at a time: while someone records, a microphone in the middle of the table shows who.
• A second after it is sent it plays for everyone at the table, even with the sound off. There are none in a game against bots only.
• If a voice note is rude or abusive, press Report voice note above your cards, there for 5 seconds once the note has played. Voice notes are kept for 7 days, and a reported one until an admin has dealt with it. An admin can stop a player sending them.

Leaving a game

• Leave in the middle of a round, or lose your connection, and a bot plays the rest of the round for you, your picture showing you as offline. Come back before the round ends and you simply carry on.
• Still away when the round ends, and you win nothing from it, even if the bot won it. If you pressed Leave, your seat is freed for someone else, and it counts as a quit on your profile. If you lost your connection, the game waits for you, your seat kept for ten minutes: come back by then and you carry on. Meanwhile anyone can take your seat; not back in time, or your seat taken, it counts as a quit.
• While the game waits, its scores kept, a new player can take the seat, or a bot can. Anyone at the table can ask for a bot: everyone else is asked to agree, bots at the table agree by themselves, and saying nothing for 20 seconds counts as agreeing. One player saying no is enough to keep waiting. With nobody left at the table, it closes.
• If the round you left is the one that ends the game, you still count as playing it: you win or pay from it as everyone else does, it is not a quit, and your name is on the results.
• Not connected when a game ends, and your seat is freed for someone else, though it is not a quit. Before a game, or between games, your seat is kept for a minute if you lose your connection.
• A game played only against bots does not count towards your stats, and leaving it is not a quit. Nor does a game that everyone agrees to end early count.