Vocabulaire français pour les jeux de société

What does “case” mean in French?

On a board game, une case is one square: j’avance mon pion de quatre cases means “I move my piece four squares.” The same word covers the little boxes printed on a form, which is why cocher une case is “to tick a box,” and the compartments in a drawer or a pill organiser. One noun for any small marked-off space, on a board or on paper.

It gives French one of its most-used idioms for starting over: retour à la case départ, “back to square one” — the case départ being the starting square, an image borrowed from board games like the jeu de l’oie and Monopoly. So on est de retour à la case départ is a project that has undone all its own progress.