Thanksgiving football squares: three games, one family, zero arguments

Thanksgiving is the best squares day of the regular season and it is not close. Three games back to back, a house full of people who are going to be on the couch anyway, and a built-in break between each game to settle up and reset. In 2026 the NFL stretched it to five games over three days, with Green Bay at the Rams on Wednesday night and Denver at Pittsburgh on Black Friday bookending the Thursday triple.

The 2026 Thanksgiving slate

• Wednesday, November 25: Green Bay at Los Angeles Rams
• Thursday, November 26: Chicago at Detroit (early afternoon)
• Thursday, November 26: Philadelphia at Dallas (late afternoon)
• Thursday, November 26: Kansas City at Buffalo (primetime)
• Friday, November 27: Denver at Pittsburgh

One board per game

Each squares board follows a single game, so Thanksgiving means three boards for the Thursday games (or five for the whole holiday). That sounds like more work than it is. In Boxpick you create each board in under a minute, and each one gets its own link. Text all three links to the family group the weekend before, and people claim squares on whichever games they care about. Aunt Carol takes the Lions game, the cousins pile into the night game.

Regular season boards are free to host with no limit, so the number of boards is your call, not a pricing question.

Keep the price low and the squares plentiful

A dollar or two a square is right for Thanksgiving. The point is participation, not the pot: with three boards you want Grandma holding squares on all of them. A hundred dollar pot per game, paid out 20/20/20/40 by quarter, means six to nine different winners across the afternoon. That is the goal.

Playing for pie instead of money

Plenty of families skip the cash entirely. Leave the price blank and the board is just for fun, then attach whatever stakes you like: the winner of the final score gets first slice, the Q2 winner is exempt from dishes, the Q3 winner picks the movie. Kids get squares too. The squares for kids and families guide has more ideas.

Draw the numbers before the first kickoff

The Lions game kicks off early. Draw the numbers on Wednesday night or Thursday morning once the boards are full, one board at a time, and make it a moment: Boxpick reveals the digits one by one with an animation built for the TV. Numbers are always drawn after the squares are claimed, which is what keeps it fair when half the board is related to you.

Between games: settle up and reset

The gap between games is when hosts usually lose track of who won what. Boxpick keeps a winners list per board with the payout amount for each quarter, and the paid tracker shows who still owes for their squares, so the host is not doing math during the Cowboys pregame. It tracks the money; it never touches it.

Remote relatives play too

The brother-in-law watching from Denver claims his squares from the same link and sees the same live board. No app, no account. See virtual squares with remote friends for how that works.