PlayNook

Print & Play

Printable Pen and Paper Games

Eight games. Tick what you want, press Print once, and you have a stack of paper that will outlast a long car journey.

What to print

Style

Paper

Tic-Tac-ToeTic-Tac-Toe · playnook.io
Tic-Tac-Toe — 12 grids
HangmanGame 1WordLetters usedABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZGame 2WordLetters usedABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZGame 3WordLetters usedABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZHangman · playnook.io
Hangman — 3 games
Dots and BoxesPlayer 1boxes closedPlayer 2boxes closedDots and Boxes · playnook.io
Dots and Boxes — 8 × 8 boxes
Four in a RowFill a circle from the bottom of a column upwards. 4 in a line wins.ABCDEFG123456Player 1 ______ Player 2 ______ Drawn ______ABCDEFG123456Player 1 ______ Player 2 ______ Drawn ______Four in a Row · playnook.io
Four in a Row — 7 × 6 — the standard board
SOSWrite an S or an O in any empty square. Spell S-O-S in a line and score, then go again.Player 1Player 2SOS · playnook.io
SOS — 7 × 7
NimCross out as many marks as you like from one row. Agree first whether taking the last mark wins or loses.Game 1Game 2Game 3Nim · playnook.io
Nim — Three games
Sprouts4 starting spotsGame 1Game 2Game 3Game 4Sprouts · playnook.io
Sprouts — 4 spots
Player 110 × 10Your fleet — draw your ships hereA1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8I9J10Your shots — hits and misses hereA1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8I9J10Fleettick a square per hitSea Battle · playnook.io
Sea Battle — Player 1
Player 210 × 10Your fleet — draw your ships hereA1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8I9J10Your shots — hits and misses hereA1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8I9J10Fleettick a square per hitSea Battle · playnook.io
Sea Battle — Player 2

Why this exists

A stack of printed pen and paper game sheets: a dots and boxes grid, a hangman sheet, a four in a row board and a sea battle grid

Search for printable pen and paper games and most of the first page is for sale — PDF packs on Etsy, worksheets behind an email address, bundles on teaching marketplaces. The rest are lists of game names with no sheet attached, so you read about dots and boxes and then have to go and draw a grid of dots yourself.

This is the thing both of those are standing in for: the sheets themselves, all of them, free, in one print job.

What you get, and who it suits

Eight games across nine sheets, in rough order of how young a child can play them:

  • Tic-tac-toe (4+) — twelve grids to a page, because the game lasts a minute and children want another.
  • Dots and boxes (5+) — the one where a five-year-old and an adult can genuinely both enjoy themselves, because the chain endgame is real strategy.
  • Four in a row (5+) — two boards to a sheet. Fill the lowest empty circle in a column; gravity does the rest.
  • Hangman (6+) — needs reading, and is still the best vocabulary game ever invented by accident.
  • Nim (6+) — rows of marks to cross out. Looks trivial and is completely solved mathematics.
  • SOS (7+) — write an S or an O and try to spell S-O-S. The trap is that most squares you fill help your opponent.
  • Sea battle (7+) — two sheets, one per player. Hide a fleet, call squares.
  • Sprouts (8+) — spots joined by curves, invented by two Cambridge mathematicians, and far stranger than it looks.

Two styles, and why the ink saver is not the cheap option

Notebook is pale blue on warm paper — what these games look like drawn in a school exercise book, and the nicer one to hand somebody.

Ink saver is plain black on white. It costs almost nothing to print thirty copies, a coloured pencil shows up better against it, and it is the one to choose if you are laminating: a dry-wipe pen wipes cleanly off a plain sheet and smears on a tinted one.

Frequently asked questions

What is in the pack? Eight games on nine sheets: tic-tac-toe, hangman, dots and boxes, four in a row, SOS, Nim, sprouts, and sea battle — which takes two sheets because each player needs their own. Tick the ones you want and the rest are left out of the print job.

Do I have to print all of them? No. Everything is ticked to start with, but untick anything you do not want and it disappears from both the preview and the print. If you only want dots and boxes and hangman, you print two pages.

Is there really no sign-up? None. No email address, no account, no watermark, and no limit on how many copies you make. Print one for a car journey or thirty for a class.

How do I save it as a PDF instead? Press Print and choose “Save as PDF” as the printer in the dialog that appears. Every browser has that option built in, so you get the same file the paid packs sell — without paying for it.

Which games work for the youngest children? Tic-tac-toe from about four, dots and boxes and four in a row from about five. Hangman needs reading, so six or so. Nim, SOS and sea battle suit seven and up, and sprouts is the one that rewards a bit of stubbornness — eight and up, and adults find it surprisingly hard.

Can I laminate these? Yes, and it is the best thing you can do with them. Choose the ink saver style, laminate the sheet, and a dry-wipe pen turns it into a board you can use all term. That works for every game here except hangman, where the word changes each round anyway.

What if I want a different size of board? Each game has its own page with size options — dots and boxes in three grid sizes, four in a row in four board sizes, sea battle with three fleets, and so on. This page prints the most common size of each so you do not have to make eight decisions to get a stack of paper.

Each game on its own

This page prints the usual size of everything. If you want to choose — a bigger dots and boxes grid, a nine-wide four in a row, the ten-ship Russian fleet for sea battle — each game has its own page with the options:

And if you would rather not print anything at all, the guide to games you only need paper for explains the rules of each and points at the ones you can play in the browser instead.