Idiom: Back to Square One

start again

Examples

• The plan failed
• back to square one.

Key rules

• Back to square one means start again because a plan has failed
• It is informal and comes from board games
• Use "back to square one" with a verb such as "we are" or "we're"
• The article "the" is not used before "square one"

Common mistakes

• We are back to the square one → We are back to square one