back to square one

English

Snakes send one back to square one

Probably from a metaphorical use of the children’s games snakes and ladders.[1][2]

back to square one (not comparable)

(idiomatic) Located back at the start, as after a dead end or failure.
After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we are back to square one.
- 1952 Edward Maurice Hugh-Jones, The Economic Journal, “The American Economy, 1860–1940. by A. J. Youngson Brown”, p. 411:
  Withal he has the problem of maintaining the interest of the reader who is always being sent back to square one in a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders.

located back at the start, as after a dead-end or failure

French: de retour à la case départ
German: Alles auf Anfang, zurück auf Feld eins
Indonesian: kembali ke awal, balik ke awal
Italian: essere punto e a capo
Polish: na punkcie wyjścia
Portuguese: voltar à estaca zero
Russian: на круги своя́ (ru) (na krugi svojá), у разби́того коры́та (ru) (u razbítovo korýta)
Swedish: tillbaka till ruta ett
Tagalog: balik sa umpisa

back to square one (not comparable)

(idiomatic) Back to the start, as after a dead end or failure.
After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we went back to square one.

back to the start, as after a dead-end or failure

“Extract revised for OED Online: square one”, in Oxford English Dictionary‎, January 2006, archived from the original on 2006-03-16, retrieved 10 November 2013.
Gary Martin (1997–), “Back to square one”, in The Phrase Finder, retrieved 26 February 2017.