SEMANTIC ENIGMAS



What is the origin of the phrase "back to square one?" I HAVE always believed the phrase to be an analogy between life and the game of snakes and ladders. You travel through the game and when you think you have the winning square in sight, you land on the tail of the largest snake. This takes you back to the first square on the board - square one - and you have to start all over again. Rita Arafa, Macclesfield, Cheshire. THE PHRASE originates from the days when football was listened to a lot on the radio. To help the listener picture the scene, the pitch was divided up into a grid of imaginary squares, square one being around the goalmouth. Thus, whenever the ball went out of play for a goal kick, or someone made a boring pass-back (of the type no longer allowed), the commentator would groan: "Back to square one". Julian Chinn (106247.1305@compuserve.com) , THERE were many board games, popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with numbered squares similar to Snakes & Ladders, where a player landing on a square carrying a penalty might have to go "back to square one" - and this is clearly the origin of the phrase. Despite Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and other books such as the Dictionary of Modern Phrase, the phrase has no connection with radio commentaries on football matches. As a boy in the 1930s, I regularly listened to such broadcasts while following the movement of the ball on a football-pitch chart in the Radio Times which was divided into eight squares. Captain H B T Wakelam gave the commentary while Charles Lapworth would murmur "Square 3" . . . "Square 5" . . . as the ball moved about the field. Wakelam never mentioned the squares, and Lapworth said nothing else. The phrase "back to square one" was never used. On the 50th anniversary of broadcast commentaries in 1973, an article in the Radio Times credited the phrase to these commentaries, but one has only to look at the diagram to see that the phrase could have no relevance: "back" to one team would be "forward" to the other; the restart after a goal was never in square one; and a pass-back to goal could also be "back to square two", "square seven" or "square eight". Norman Brindley, Caddington, Beds.



Add your answer













