Pocket Games
Shut the Box
Tiles numbered 1 to 9, two dice, and one rule: you lower the tiles that add up to your roll. Whoever leaves the lowest total showing wins. The wooden box has been doing the rounds of English and Norman taverns for centuries.
The rules
In front of you sit the tiles 1 to 9, all raised. You roll two dice and lower the tiles that, added together, make the result. If you roll an 8 you can close the 8, or 5 and 3, or 6 and 2, or 1, 3 and 4: any combination as long as the sum matches.
You keep rolling as long as a combination is possible. When the dice give a number you can no longer make, your turn ends and your score is the sum of the tiles still raised. The lowest total wins; closing every tile — "shutting the box" — is the perfect game.
There is a classic rule implemented here: when the tiles still raised add up to 6 or less, you may roll a single die. It is a real privilege, and knowing how to earn it is half the strategy.
On Pocket Games you play against another person on the same phone or against the bot, in the 9 tile version or the 12 tile one. The record — tiles left, so lower is better — is saved separately for each version.
How to choose, when the sum allows options
This is the only decision the game asks of you, and it comes up every turn.
Close the high numbers first. With two dice the most likely result is 7, and the middle numbers come up far more often than the extremes. High numbers are the hardest to shift because they need a high roll or a combination of several tiles: getting rid of them early, while you still have plenty of low tiles to build sums with, is nearly always right.
Use as few tiles as possible. If you can make 8 with the 8 or with 1+3+4, take the 8. Low tiles are your building blocks: they make future rolls workable, and burning three of them on a single roll leaves you disarmed.
Watch the gaps. It is not only about which numbers remain, it is about which sums you can still make. Being left with 2, 3 and 9 is a worse position than being left with 4, 5 and 6, even though the total is nearly the same: from the first you cannot survive a 7, from the second you can.
Aim for the threshold of 6. Getting down to tiles that add up to 6 or less unlocks the single-die roll, and with one die the game becomes hugely more manageable. It is worth choosing your closures with that threshold in mind in the late turns.
The odds, briefly
With two dice there are 36 combinations. A 7 comes up 6 times in 36, a 2 and a 12 just once each. In practice the 1 and the 2 tiles are the easiest to close (they fit into a huge number of combinations as addends), while the 9 rarely appears on its own and should be closed the moment the chance arrives.
Shutting the whole box is rare: in the 9 tile version it happens in a small percentage of games even with good play. A good result is finishing under 10 points; under 5 is an excellent game.
Frequently asked questions
Why can I not always roll one die?
The rule applies when the tiles still raised add up to 6 or less. With a 9 still raised, for instance, a single die could never close it.
Does the highest or lowest score win?
The lowest. Your score is what you were left holding: it is a game that counts what you failed to close.
Is the 12 tile version just longer?
Longer and harder: the 10, 11 and 12 tiles necessarily require combinations of several tiles, so your early decisions carry much more weight.
Can the bot be beaten?
Yes. It always picks a valid combination and, with tile counts equal, closes the highest value: a decent heuristic, not perfect play. Against it, what matters most is not wasting your low tiles.
More games to try
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