back to square one

Meaning: (idiomatic)Located back at thestart, as after adead endorfailure.After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we areback to square one.1952, Edward Maurice Hugh-Jones, “The American Economy, 1860-1940. by A. J. Youngson Brown”, inThe Economic Journal, page411:Withal he has the problem of maintaining the interest of the reader who is always being sentback to square onein a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders.

Examples:

EN: We are back to square one!
ES: ¡Vuelve a las andadas!
EN: We're back to square one.
ES: Estamos como al principio.
EN: Boy! With the Di Pietro case, we're back to square one! Square one.
ES: Entonces, para el caso de Di Pietro, empezamos de cero. ¡A trabajar!
EN: I was back to square one.
ES: Vuelta a la casilla de salida.
EN: After all this suffering we're back to square one.
ES: después de tantos sufrimientos hemos vuelto al punto de partida.
EN: The ante was too high, please understand me. Well, since I don't have the Panther anymore, you're back to square one.
ES: Bueno, como ya no tengo la pantera, esto se volverá aburrido.
EN: So we've lost our last witness and now we go back to square one.
ES: No hay testigos. Volvamos...
EN: -We're back to square one.
ES: - Volvemos al principio.
EN: So, we're back to square one.
ES: Como sea, estamos como al principio.
EN: So this chap is back to square one, figuring it all out, but not with me.
ES: Así que debe empezar desde el principio, pero sin mí.
EN: Yes, we're back to square one.
ES: Sí, tendremos que empezar de nuevo.
EN: This puts us back to square one.
ES: ¡Y con esto hemos regresado al punto de partida!
EN: Yes, I see, they might as well go back to square one.
ES: Sí, ya me doy cuenta, hay que volver a empezar de cero.
EN: - Well, we're back to square one.
ES: Volvemos al punto de partida.
EN: The truth is that without the tyre, we're back to square one.
ES: Lo cierto es que sin la rueda, estamos otra vez como al principio.

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