Baby Squares Pool: How to Run a 10x10 Baby Shower Betting Board (Free Grid + Rules)

If your family has ever run a Super Bowl squares pool, you already know this game. A big board of 100 squares, everyone writes their name in a few of them, and nobody has a clue which square is good until the numbers are drawn. Baby squares is exactly that, except the final score is your baby's birth weight and birth time.

It is the perfect game for the guests who say "I have no idea, just put me down for something". No knowledge needed, no wrong answers, and grandpa has the same chance as the midwife in the family. Here is how to run one, with a grid you can copy tonight.

How baby squares works, in one minute

1. Draw a 10x10 board. Leave the top row and the left column empty for now.
2. Guests claim squares by writing their name in them. One square or five, your call.
3. When the board is full, draw the numbers. Pull the digits 0 to 9 out of a cup, one by one, and write them along the top. Do it again for the left side.
4. The baby picks the winner. The top row is the last digit of the birth weight, the side is the last digit of the birth minute. Where those two meet is the winning square.

Example: the baby arrives at 4:38 am weighing 7 lb 12 oz. The weight digit is 2 (from 12 oz), the minute digit is 8 (from :38). Find column 2, run down to row 8, and whoever wrote their name there just won the baby shower.

The free 10x10 grid

Copy this onto a poster board, a whiteboard or a spreadsheet. The question marks are the digits you draw once every square is taken.

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Write two labels on the board so nobody has to ask: "Across: last digit of birth weight (ounces)" and "Down: last digit of birth minute". Add the due date and the date the board closes at the top.

Why the numbers are drawn last

This is the one rule you cannot skip, and there is a good reason for it. Ounces run from 0 to 15, so the digits 0 to 5 turn up twice as often as 6 to 9: a 7 lb 3 oz baby and a 7 lb 13 oz baby both land on 3. If the digits were printed on the board from the start, the savvy uncle would grab every square in the 0 to 5 columns and everyone else would be playing for scraps.

Drawing the numbers after the board is full keeps it honest. Nobody knows whether they are sitting on a lucky 3 or a lonely 8, and that is what makes the reveal fun. The birth minute is already perfectly random, 0 to 9 are equally likely, which is why it makes the better second axis than the birth date.

Make the draw part of the party: have the grandparents-to-be pull the numbers out of a baby bottle or a knitted bootie. Take a photo of the finished board and share it with everyone, so there is a record if the poster goes missing before the birth.

House rules to settle before the first name goes in

Write these under the board. They take two minutes now and save a lot of discussion later.

• Price per square. Anything from a dollar to five dollars is typical, or play for a prize instead of cash. A popular split: half the pot to the winner, half into the baby's savings account.
• Empty squares. If the winning square has no name, decide in advance: the pot goes to the baby, or it moves to the nearest claimed square to the right.
• Official numbers. Weight and time come from the hospital record, not from what someone texted at 3 am.
• The parents do not play. They get to be the referees and the ones who announce the winner.
• Closing day. The board closes a few weeks before the due date, the numbers are drawn that day, and nothing changes after.

For the bigger picture on deadlines, prizes and ties, our baby pool rules cover all of it, and they apply to squares just as well.

Five twists on the classic board

• Small group, big board. Only 20 guests? Everyone gets five squares. Hand them out in a random order so nobody clusters their squares in one corner.
• The consolation square. Flip the winning digits (row 2, column 8 instead of column 2, row 8) and give that square a small prize, like first pick of the dessert table.
• Metric board. Outside the US, use the tens digit of the weight in grams: 3,470 g gives a 7. Some hospital scales round to 5 or 10 grams, so the very last digit is too often a 0.
• Date instead of time. Prefer a board that feels like a due date bet? Use the last digit of the birth day (the 16th gives a 6) for the rows. It is slightly less random, but the family will love counting down.
• Two boards. Run a second board for length and birth day and you get two winners and twice the suspense.

Squares is luck, the baby pool is skill

Squares is wonderful because it is pure luck. That is also its limit: nobody gets to be right. Half the family wants to predict that this baby comes late, bald and nine pounds heavy, and then be proven right in front of everyone.

So give them both. Hang the board on the wall for the luck crowd, and put a QR code next to it for a baby pool where everyone enters their own prediction for the date, time, weight and name from their phone. The points are calculated the moment you enter the birth details, and cousins abroad can play along without anyone copying their texts onto a poster. Need a paper version of the prediction game too? The baby pool template has a guess sheet and a date grid ready to print, and for a team at work the office baby pool setup takes five minutes.

Then all that is left is the best part: waiting for the call, grabbing the board and finding out whose square the baby picked.