back to the drawing board

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.”

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.

Example Sentences

"Ofcom needs to go back to the drawing board and bring forward plans to stamp out mid-contract price rises once and for all."

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"The final will be amazing whoever we play. We will celebrate this tonight and go back to the drawing board tomorrow."

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“We go back to the drawing board every week with him,” pitching coach Mark Prior said at the time.

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"There's another bit that moves on in court - something changes - and we're back to the drawing board," he added.

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Wednesday's rejection means the government will have to go back to the drawing board, with little time to meet its 27 October deadline.

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