Tool 01 · Squares
50 square pool
Half the squares, same game. Each row covers two digits.
How it works
- 01
Set the game
Name the pool and type in the two teams. Everything else is optional.
- 02
Get the names in
Tap squares one at a time, or paste a list like “Jamie x5” and draw at random.
- 03
Draw the numbers
Do this after the squares are sold. Both axes are drawn with your browser's secure randomness.
- 04
Print or send it
A clean sheet as PNG, PDF or paper. No ads, no menus, no site chrome.
What the half grid changes
A 50 square sheet is five rows by ten columns. The top axis works exactly as it does on a full grid — ten columns, one digit each. The side axis is where the difference lives: five rows carrying two digits apiece.
The practical effect is that every square is worth two squares on a hundred-box sheet. Your odds of taking any given quarter go from one in a hundred to one in fifty, and the pot is usually smaller to match. Nothing about the game changes for the people playing it — you still buy a box, you still find out four times.
Choose this size when you can see that a hundred boxes will not sell. Twelve to twenty people buying two or three each fills fifty comfortably, and a full sheet is worth more than a bigger sheet with forty holes in it — an unsold box is a box nobody gets paid for, and the organizer usually ends up covering it.
One thing worth saying out loud before you sell: the doubled digits go on one team's axis, not both. That team's exact score matters slightly less to the outcome. It costs nothing and nobody minds, but it is the sort of thing somebody notices in the fourth quarter, and it is better if they heard it from you first.
Too many boxes still? Drop to a 25 square sheet. Filling a hundred without trouble? Use the full ten by ten instead.
Questions
How does a 50 square grid cover every score?
The columns still carry one digit each, zero through nine. The five rows carry two digits each — a row might be 3 and 8. So any final digit down the side lands in exactly one row, and every possible pair of digits still has exactly one home. Nothing is left uncovered; the side of the grid is simply less specific than the top.
Is a 50 square sheet still fair?
Yes, as long as the digits are drawn after the squares are sold, same as a hundred-square sheet. Every square covers two of the hundred possible digit pairs instead of one, and every square covers exactly two. Nobody has a better box than anybody else at the moment of the draw.