Square one...

Anyone else wish that they could go back to square one and start again? Of course I’m not really sure quite where or what square one is. Is it birth or that twilight time before we are born, or is it something far older linked to creation? Maybe we are all playing a huge celestial game of Snakes and Ladders.

Cosmic. To infinity and beyond!

There are a few theories about the term ‘square one’ and how it came about. The first is linked to board games. The earliest use of the phrase in print is 1952, from the Economic Journal: “the reader is always being sent back to square one in a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders.” Of course on most snakes and ladders boards you don’t slide all the way back down to square one, it’s usually square four; but I guess it’s a contender.

Then there’s the hopscotch (the game that some of us played in the playground) theory. It’s played on a chalked grid of numbered squares. The rules of the game can vary, but it usually involves hopping from square to square whilst missing out the square with the thrown stone. Players usually hop from square one to eight or ten, dependent on the length of the scotch, and then back to square one.

My favourite’s the BBC football theory. Back in the twenties early BBC radio commentators helped listeners to follow the progress of football and rugby matches by dividing the pitch into eight notional rectangles. They described the play by saying which 'square' the ball was in. The term ‘back to square one’ was never used but despite this, the BBC claimed in January’s 2007 edition of The Radio Times (celebrating 80 years of BBC football commentary), that The Radio Times’ grids led to the phrase. The grid system was dropped in the 1930s, but not before ‘back to square one’ had entered the consciousness of the nation apparently.

Snakes and Ladders, Hopscotch, Football; whichever one of these it was it seems to have been a game - a bit like life really; a really big game with winners and losers, progression and set-backs, pinnacles and depressions. Corny I know, but true I think. Given the chance though, would I really press the cosmic reset button and start over? I don’t know, maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. Shall I roll the dice again?

To infinity and beyond! Or maybe just back to square one.