How to Play
Learn BoxOff in five minutes
One player. One rule that matters. The draft below is placeholder wording — replace it with the wording from the printed rulebook.
Setup
Place the empty tray in front of you and keep the piece bag within reach. Draw pieces one at a time and drop each into the next open cell, filling the tray in reading order.
Replace with exact component list and starting count from the rulebook.
The core rule
Remove a matching pair with a clear box between them
Pick any two pieces of the same colour. Draw the smallest rectangle (the “box”) that contains both. If that rectangle contains no other pieces, lift the pair out. If it contains even one other piece, the move is not allowed.
Legal
The two matching pieces are corners of a rectangle that is otherwise empty, so they come off together.
Blocked
Another piece sits inside the rectangle, so this pair cannot be removed yet. Clear the intruder first.
A turn
Step by step
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Draw and place
Take pieces from the bag and fill the tray until it is full, or until the rulebook's draw limit is reached.
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Look for a clear box
Scan for two pieces of one colour whose connecting rectangle is empty.
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Remove the pair
Lift both pieces out. The gaps they leave open up new moves.
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Repeat
Keep removing pairs. Draw again when the rules allow, and keep space open for the pieces still to come.
Winning and losing
Placeholder: you win if you remove every piece and leave the tray empty. You lose if the tray fills and no legal pair remains. Replace this with the precise end-game and scoring text from the rulebook.
Variants
Placeholder: note any two-player, timed, or scoring variants here, plus a pointer to the monthly challenges for fixed starting layouts.
Put it into practice
Set up this month's fixed layout and see how far you get.