back to the drawing board
(PW) rethink an idea, need to start over
When my supervisor told me that our idea would not work, we had to go back to the drawing board to come up with something else.
(GoEnglish) time to start over again ...
When the project you are working on fails, and you have to start again, you go back to the drawing board. Example: "It looks like my plan to kill the weeds in the garden has failed. Back to the drawing board."
The drawing board is the place where a designer begins with an idea and builds it into a plan. If your plan is not successful, then you have to go back to the drawing board to start again and think up a new plan. Example: "How is your science project coming along?" Reply: "It didn't work at all!" Answer: "Well, back to the drawing board."
(UsingEnglish)
If you have to go back to the drawing board, you have to go back to the beginning and start something again.
(thePhraseFinder)
Meaning: Start again on a new design - after a failure of an earlier attempt.
Origin:
This term is been used since WWII as a jocular acceptance that a design has failed and that a new one is needed. It gained common currency quite quickly and began appearing in US newspapers by 1947, as here in the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Washington, December 1947:
"Grid injuries for the season now closing suggest anew that nature get back to the drawing board, as the human knee is not only nothing to look at but also a piece of bum engineering."
It was well-enough known by 1966 for it to be used as a title for an episode in the 'Get Smart' TV series, and has also been used as the title of several books.
A drawing board is, of course, an architect's or draughtsman's table, used for the preparation of designs or blueprints.
The phrase originated as the caption to a cartoon produced by Peter Arno (Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr.), for the New Yorker magazine, in 1941. The cartoon shows various military men and ground crew racing toward a crashed plane, and a designer, with a roll of plans under his arm, walking away saying, "Well, back to the old drawing board".
