back to the drawing board

A saying indicating that one's effort has failed, and one must start all over again: “The new package we designed hasn't increased our sales as we'd hoped, so it's back to the drawing board.”

Discover More

Idioms and Phrases

Also, back to square one. Back to the beginning because the current attempt was unsuccessful, as in When the town refused to fund our music program, we had to go back to the drawing board, or I've assembled this wrong side up, so it's back to square one. The first term originated during World War II, most likely from the caption of a cartoon by Peter Arno in The New Yorker magazine. It pictured a man who held a set of blueprints and was watching an airplane explode. The variant is thought to come from a board game or street game where an unlucky throw of dice or a marker sends the player back to the beginning of the course. It was popularized by British sports-casters in the 1930s, when the printed radio program included a grid with numbered squares to help listeners follow the description of a soccer game.

Discover More

Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

"It's back to the drawing board against our old rival Spain," said former England international Lindsay Johnson on BBC Radio 5 Live.

From

“We go back to the drawing board every week with him. We try to talk to him about some certain things, some ideas,” Prior said.

From

"A whole year took a lot of my body physically and mentally," Garcia said, adding that he would now go "back to the drawing board".

From

Some on social media said the new Type 00 car was "exciting" and "absolutely stunning", while others called it "rubbish" and told Jaguar's designers to "go back to the drawing board".

From

It would just delay the negotiations and they'll have to go back to the drawing board anyway.

From

back-to-basics back to the salt mines

Browse