back to the drawing board

Meaning: (idiomatic)Indicates that one must try a differentstrategyfor achieving somegoalfollowing thefailureof a recentattempt.Well, that didn't work at all, so it'sback to the drawing board, I guess.1958,The Engineer, volume205, page920:For such cases the only thing is to goback to the drawing boardand do it better; and it is here that the highest qualities of vision and human leadership are needed.1999, Mark L. Thompson, “Monday, October 28: Lake Michigan, Upbound”, inA Sailor’s Logbook: A Season Aboard Great Lakes Freighters(Great Lakes Books), Detroit, Mich.:Wayne State University Press,→ISBN,page282:If we head for lay up tomorrow, those plans are right down the toilet and it'sback to the drawing board.1999,Muhammad Yunus, “Opinion: Must There be Poverty?”, in Carolyn Dedolph, editor,Rice: Hunger or Hope?: IRRI 1998–1999, Makati City, Philippines:International Rice Research Institute,→ISBN,page 2:Poverty is created by institutions, concepts, and policies. We need to goback to the drawing boardto redesign these and remove the barriers.2013August 19, Lenore Taylor, “Go back to the drawing board on climate policy, business tells politicians”, inThe Guardian‎[2]:Big business wants the main parties to goback to the drawing boardon climate policy after the election to try to come up with an agreed plan for an economically efficient way to reduce Australia's emissions and offer investment certainty.2019April 5, Sam Levin, “Google scraps AI ethics council after backlash: ‘Back to the drawing board’”, inThe Guardian‎[3]:“It’s become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can’t function as we wanted. So we’re ending the council and goingback to the drawing board,” a Google spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement on Thursday.

Examples:

EN: Or I could go back to the drawing board.
ES: O podria volver al tablero de dibujo.
EN: Terrible news. It's back to the drawing board.
ES: Es terrible, hay que rehacer todo.
EN: He's just going back to the drawing board.
ES: Debería volver a sus experimentos.
EN: It's back to the drawing board, Knuckles.
ES: Volvamos al bar Nudillos.
EN: I guess it's back to the drawing board for me.
ES: Supongo que tengo que empezar de nuevo.
EN: If I did, the military went back to the drawing board.
ES: Si lo lograba, los militares regresarían a sus mesas de dibujo.
EN: So I went back to the drawing board and started calculating again... and again I got the same answer.
ES: Así que volví al tablero y volví a hacer los cálculos... y obtuve la misma respuesta.
EN: Well, back to the drawing board.
ES: Bien, volveré a hacer la "randa".
EN: You might have to go back to the drawing board.
ES: Puede que tengan que volver a diseñarlo.
EN: It was back to the drawing board.
ES: Había que volver al replantearse todo.
EN: Oh, back to the drawing board To plan for tomorrow night.
ES: De vuelta a la mesa de dibujo para planificar todo para mañana a la noche.
EN: Looks like it's back to the drawing board.
ES: Parece que es hora de volver a las pizarras.
EN: When the king told him to go back to the drawing board, Wren's normally very dry eyes are said to have filled with tears.
ES: Cuando el Rey le dijo que volviera a su mesa de dibujo, se dice que los ojos de Wren, habitualmente muy secos, se llenaron de lágrimas.
EN: I gotta go back to the drawing board
ES: Tengo que volver a la mesa de dibujo
EN: Oh, well, back to the drawing board.
ES: Bueno, de vuelta a la pizarra.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).