back to the drawing board

Cultural  

1. 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.”

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back to the drawing board Idioms  

1. 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.

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Example Sentences

“If you’re not finishing at the top in a championship, you’re immediately back to the drawing board trying to figure out how to get there again.”

From The Wall Street Journal • May 29, 2026

Either way, the move by Amazon comes as retailers, travel apps and restaurants continue to fine-tune their AI shopping assistants — or go back to the drawing board altogether.

From MarketWatch • May 13, 2026

As for Forest, it's back to the drawing board.

From BBC • Jan. 9, 2026

Lewis and other Republican leaders went back to the drawing board.

From Salon • Dec. 24, 2025

“I suppose we could go back to the drawing board and reallocate our square footage.”

From "A Long Way from Chicago" by Richard Peck