February 6, 2016 9:59 PM CST

Super Bowl “Squares” Analysis

I’ve heard of a few people playing a game for the Super Bowl where you put your name in a square on a 10×10 grid. Each column and row gets a random number, 0-9. The last digit of the score at the end of each quarter determines who wins that square. So if the score was 7-0, whoever had the 7 column and the 0 row’s cell would win. If the score was 14-12, the 4 column and 2 row’s cell would win. It’s pretty simple, but if you’re still unclear, check out this page that has a few nice illustrations.

I thought I’d take a look at the last 49 results and analyze how often each square won. Here’s what I found.

End of Quarter 1

vs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 11 0 0 3 1 0 0 1 0 0
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 7 0 0 4 0 0 0 1 0 0
4 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0
5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
7 7 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0
8 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
9 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

End of Quarter 2

vs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 2 0 1 3 0 0 0 1 0 0
1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0
2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 0 0
4 3 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0
5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 3 0 0 2 1 0 0 1 0 0
7 4 0 0 2 2 0 1 2 0 0
8 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
9 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

End of Quarter 3

vs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0
1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0
2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0
4 4 0 0 2 2 0 0 2 0 1
5 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
6 1 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 1 0
7 1 0 1 2 0 0 1 0 0 1
8 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
9 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

End of Quarter 4

vs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1
1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 3 0 1
2 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1
3 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0
4 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 1
5 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0
7 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 0 0
8 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1
9 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0

Data: super-bowl-scores.xlsx, http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/history/boxscore/sbxx and a bunch of other similar pages.

Some other stories from Heated Bits you might want to read: